Catalysts for Conservation
Exploring Behavioral Science Insights
for Natural Resource Investments
Lynn Scarlett, James Boyd, and Anna Brittain,
with Leonard Shabman and Tim Brennan
SEPTEMBER 2013
Table of Contents
Executive Summary .............................................................................................................................. 1
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 9
Part One: Overview—Theories of Attitude Formation and Behavior .............................. 11
I. Challenges Associated with a Broad Overview .............................................................................. 11
II. Social Science Insights on Behavior: A Broad Summary ........................................................... 12
A. Attitude Formation and Behavior ................................................................................................. 13
Part One—Summary of Key Findings .................................................................................................... 18
Part Two: Social and Behavioral Research and Applications .............................................. 18
I. How Individuals Think and Act ............................................................................................................ 18
A. Social Psychology ................................................................................................................................ 19
B. Social Norms and Conformity ......................................................................................................... 32
C. Risk Perceptions—Experts and Public Attitudes .................................................................... 38
D. Economics and Individual Behavior ............................................................................................ 39
Part Two (I: A–D)—Social Psychology, Norms, Risk Perception, and Behavioral
Economics: Summary of Key Findings ............................................................................................ 42
II. Collective Settings for Conservation Actions—Businesses and Communities................. 43
A. Businesses and the Marketplace ................................................................................................... 43
Part Two—(II: A) Business Behaviors: Summary of Key Findings ............................................ 59
B. Communities and Collective Action.............................................................................................. 60
Part Two—(II: B) Collective Settings: Summary of Key Findings .............................................. 88
III. Broad Social, Cultural, and Political Settings ............................................................................... 89
A. The Policy Context—Insights from Economics........................................................................ 89
B. Communication and Social Marketing......................................................................................... 91
© 2013 Resources for the Future.
Resources for the Future is an independent, nonpartisan think
tank that, through its social science research, enables
policymakers and stakeholders to make better, more informed
decisions about energy, environmental, and natural resource
issues. Located in Washington, DC, its research scope comprises
programs in nations around the world.
Part Two: (III. A–B)—Broad Social, Cultural, and Political Settings: Summary of
Key Findings ............................................................................................................................................ 100
Part Three: Case Example—Payment for Environmental Services on Working Lands
....................................................................................................................................................... 102
I. Framing the Issue .................................................................................................................................... 102
II. The Setting ................................................................................................................................................ 103
III. Converging Interests and the FRESP Process ............................................................................ 104
A. Different Stakeholders—A Shared Interest ............................................................................ 104
B. Building Trust and Finding Common Ground ........................................................................ 104
C. New Participants and the Basic Vision ...................................................................................... 105
D. Building a Credible Analytical Case ............................................................................................ 105
E. Identifying Barriers and Challenges ........................................................................................... 106
IV. FRESP Is Created ................................................................................................................................... 107
A. The FRESP Vision .............................................................................................................................. 107
B. Addressing the Design Challenges .............................................................................................. 108
V. Lessons Learned ..................................................................................................................................... 112
Part Four: Communicating Climate Change ............................................................................ 114
I. Climate Change: The Communications Challenge ....................................................................... 114
A. Psychological Barriers to Action ................................................................................................. 115
B. Logic Schism and Moving toward the Middle ......................................................................... 116
C. Framing and Narrative .................................................................................................................... 117
II. Climate Brokers and the “Right Science” ...................................................................................... 119
III. Communicating Impacts with Local Experiences .................................................................... 121
IV. Networks and Innovative Marketing ............................................................................................ 121
V. Communicating Climate Change: Summary of Key Findings ................................................ 122
Part Five: Conclusions and Summary of Findings ................................................................. 124
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CATALYSTS FOR CONSERVATION: EXPLORING BEHAVIORAL
SCIENCE INSIGHTS FOR NATURAL RESOURCE INVESTMENTS
Lynn Scarlett, James Boyd, and Anna Brittain
with contributions from Leonard Shabman and Tim Brennan1
Executive Summary
Scientific complexities and uncertainties, interconnections, and the need to coordinate across
jurisdictions and scales challenge our ability to address environmental issues. These challenges and
their solutions are linked to the attitudes, choices, and actions of individuals, families, communities,
businesses, lawmakers, and nations. Ultimately, their resolution depends on scientific knowledge,
technology developments, economic incentives, legal and institutional innovations, and, most
importantly, public awareness, interest, and capacity to act.
What are the ingredients for successful action? Scientists offer insights about “how the world
works”—its physical, chemical, biological, and other components, functions, and systems. Economists
offer tools for examining costs, benefits, trade-offs, incentives, and their relationship to public and
private institutions. Political scientists assess governance, public attitudes, and decisionmaking by
both the public and its representatives. Sociologists and psychologists probe the “people factor”—why
do people think what they think, how do values and attitudes form, and how do they affect choices and
actions? There is also the looming presence of communications—understanding how people respond
to different messages and media, targeting messages to specific audiences, and tracking how messages
spread.
This report summarizes insights from multiple social and behavioral science research disciplines
to shed light on environmental attitudes and corresponding behaviors. We define environmental
behavior as the decisions and choices that (a) affect the efficient and effective use of natural resources;
(b) reduce waste (energy, water, material, and so on); (c) reduce pollution; and (d) facilitate the
management of terrestrial and marine ecosystems to restore, enhance, or preserve these ecosystems,
their functions, and interconnected biodiversity.
Because of the breadth of relevant research, the report presents selected highlights. This
information can enhance efforts to engage individuals in saving energy, recycling water, or
undertaking countless other personal actions that reduce environmental impacts. It can help agencies
engage communities and can aid companies trying to protect species, sustain water supplies in small
and large watersheds, or reduce the impacts of energy or mineral extraction. It may help governments
communicate environmental challenges and work in concert to address them.
In this review, we address questions directly pertinent to environmental actions and
conservation. We apply an “individual, commercial, community, and society” organizational structure
to the discussion; however, many of the ideas apply to all four behavioral contexts.
1
Scarlett, visiting scholar and co-director of Resources for the Future’s (RFF) Center for the Management of Ecological Wealth
(CMEW); scarlett@rff.org. Boyd, senior fellow and co-director of CMEW; boyd@rff.org. Brittain, manager of CMEW;
brittain@rff.org. Shabman and Brennan are a resident scholar and a senior fellow at RFF, respectively.
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General Theories on Attitudes and Behavior
The literature on attitude formation and on the relationship between attitudes and actions is
extensive and includes a vast subset of research specifically focused on environmental attitudes and
behavior. Attitude formation itself involves more than knowledge; it involves a combination of
knowledge, affect, and intentions. Even accounting for these factors, behavior does not flow directly
from “attitudes” or “values.” Instead, attitudes (including norms, beliefs, and values) interrelate with
the situational context that influences perceived costs and benefits and with other competing values
that jointly affect environmentally significant behavior.
Summary of Selected Findings—Attitudes and Behavior

The link between attitudes and behavior is strongest when contextual factors don’t impose
high costs or constraints.

Drivers of behavioral change vary by type of conservation action, underscoring the potential
relevance of an environmental problem–oriented approach to behavior change strategies.

Approaches that involve continuous learning are more effective than “passive audience”
approaches.

Environmental information may be more effective if it is specific rather than general.
Individual Attitudes and Environmental Actions
People often use mental shortcuts to help them make decisions. These shortcuts are both
necessary and useful, but they can also reinforce biases, prejudices, and ideological divides. These
mental shortcuts also apply to how people interrelate with others. In the context of environmentally
significant behavior, this phenomenon has led to increasing recognition of the importance of
identifying community champions (both individuals and institutions) and organizing opinion-leader
interventions.
Neoclassical economics tends to assume self-interest and rationality on the part of individuals,
businesses, and other institutions. Although economists are aware that people are not always selfinterested and rational, they consider self-interest a good baseline assumption regarding people’s
motivations and rationality a reasonably good predictor of behavior. The emerging field of behavioral
economics is increasingly confronting the messier truths about human behavior, including the
psychological biases and departures from rationality and self-interest. Given interacting motivations,
incentives alone may not lead to widespread adoption of a desired behavior.
Selected Findings—Individuals

“Motivated reasoners,” influenced by values and emotion, may discount or ignore information
that challenges their existing attitudes.

People use mental shortcuts, so decisions and actions are often shaped by context, biases, and
other subconscious responses.

People are more likely to cooperate with those they perceive as similar to themselves, or as
peers.
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
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
People have strong loss aversion, so framing issues in terms of losses avoided can be more
effective than framing them in terms of gains.
Commercial Sector, Consumers, and Environmental Choices and Actions
Beyond individual behaviors, this report examines how information, social settings, and other
factors affect incentives and choices; how market and policy rules, contracts, and structures affect
incentives that, in turn, influence choices in the marketplace; and how processes of public engagement
and collaboration affect choices and action. Within this context, a significant analytical focus regarding
environmental behavior has centered on profit maximization and externalities. However, the theory of
change implied by the “profit maximization and externalities” perspective is limited and somewhat
unrealistic.
This “foundational theory” of business behavior is limited because it focuses on government as the
primary creator of environmental business incentives. Yet profit-related environmental business
incentives take a much wider variety of forms, many unrelated to government policy per se. The
foundational theory is unrealistic because it oversimplifies the relationships among business,
government, and the public. The theory works cleanly as a theory of change only if one assumes that
the government acts only in the broad public interest, the public interest is clear and uncontroversial,
and government action is effective and itself uncontroversial. Conservation strategy in this naïve
scenario would take the form of demonstrating and communicating the existence of public
environmental costs or benefits associated with business activity, presenting that evidence to the
government, and waiting for a corrective policy response.
Closer observation shows that businesses routinely engage in environmentally beneficial
behaviors that are not motivated directly by statutes or regulations. They engage in a variety of actions
that go “beyond compliance” and that can loosely be described as voluntary. But, though voluntary,
these actions should usually not be considered altruistic. Businesses can be strategic and sophisticated
when it comes to the richer social and political factors that affect their long-run profitability. This
section describes a range of factors that can lead businesses to go beyond their legal and regulatory
responsibilities.
Selected Findings—Commercial Sector

Voluntary, beyond-compliance environmental business actions are more likely to be driven by
profit motivations than by altruism.

Pro-environment business behaviors are driven by a range of consumer, employee, business
partner, and community factors.

Marketing, labeling, and certification programs have been shown to influence consumer
behavior (and thus the features of products sold by businesses), but the environmental
benefits of labeling and certification programs are poorly understood.

Supply chain motivations for beyond-compliance behavior are most likely to be associated
with large companies and valuable brands.
Collective Action, Communities, and Collaboration
Extensive research also points to the relevance and potential of collaborative and community
interventions to identify adverse environmental consequences and galvanize actions to address
them—even in contexts of conflicting values and environmental attitudes. Natural resource
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
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management decisions often involve common pool resources in which access to resources is
unrestricted or difficult to restrict. Increasingly, decision contexts involve multiple governing
jurisdictions, many agencies at different levels of government, public and private lands and resources,
and numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and individual stakeholders.
Successful conservation in these settings requires the actions of multiple public-sector, nonprofit,
and private-sector participants working in concert toward common goals. Community engagement
becomes, thus, an important aspect of addressing complex environmental issues. The broadening of
such community efforts underscores the importance of community-level behavioral insights regarding
how collections of interests and stakeholders engage, collaborate, build legitimacy, and resolve
conflicts around conservation issues.
Elinor Ostrom and others have described the emergence of co-managed common pool resources in
a variety of settings in which communities craft complex governing networks. Also, a growing
literature addresses the ecological outcomes of collaborative conservation processes and networks
and the relationship between these processes and norms, changes in norms or attitudes, and
conservation action. Much of the literature on collaboration focuses on the design of collaborative
processes, but critical to their relevance to conservation is the effect of collaboration on behavior and
relationships.
A number of studies suggest that collaborative decision processes can influence norms and
actions. Two aspects of this research are particularly relevant. First, research on the role of cognitive
processes and heuristics contributes to an understanding of how collaborative processes, particularly
those involving face-to-face engagement, can influence choices and decisions. Second, some research
on collaborative processes has explored their relationship to trust-building and the role of trust in
influencing actions. The general literature on cognition, values, collaboration, and trust points to the
importance of both institutional structures and the design of collaborative processes.
Selected Findings—Collective Settings

Conservation, like a growing number of public-sector activities, increasingly involves
governments acting as facilitators, brokers, and partners.

Governing networks and co-management of common pool resources can: (a) enhance
legitimacy, (b) create and utilize the social capital of local knowledge of local conditions, (c)
tailor responses to local conditions, and (d) offer flexibility in the context of changing
conditions.

The trend toward public-engagement approaches to natural resource management and
decisionmaking reflects the growing complexity of natural resource issues.

Collaborative processes can influence norms and actions, build trust, and enhance perceptions
of legitimacy of information and actions.
Collaboration and Science
The credibility, relevance, and legitimacy of knowledge determine its impact on decisionmaking.
Credibility refers to the extent to which the science is perceived to meet technical standards, relevance
refers to user perceptions of the appropriateness of the knowledge for addressing their needs, and
legitimacy relates to perceptions that the processes for generating and using the information are
procedurally fair. The importance of credibility, relevance, and legitimacy has turned attention to the
role of collaborative processes in bringing together scientists, stakeholders, and decisionmakers. Some
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research suggests that collaborative approaches contribute to perceptions of legitimacy, play a role in
changing attitudes and behavior, and may facilitate collective action. Significant empirical research
affirms that early involvement of intended users may correlate with greater linking of science to
decisions after project completion.
Several emerging decision frameworks reflect the analytical–deliberative approach to science and
decisionmaking that links scientists, stakeholders, and decisionmakers in ongoing dialogue and
relationships. These include joint fact-finding, collaborative values assessment, collaborative adaptive
management, and computer-aided dispute resolution processes. Many of these processes involve
science–decisionmaking boundary organizations.
Selected Findings—Collaboration and Science

Early and ongoing interactions between scientists and users of scientific information improve
the effectiveness of such interactions.

Four factors influence individual trust: (a) a willingness to take risks, (b) responses to betrayal,
(c) a sense of altruism, and (d) an assessment of the likelihood that others in a particular
setting will act in trustworthy ways. Whereas the first three elements are relatively stable
personal attributes, the fourth is subject to change.

Collaborative and network governance—both formal and informal—must: (a) provide
accountability and flexibility; (b) be characterized by inclusivity in collaboration, accompanied
by shared agreement on the processes and rules that will guide decisionmaking; (c) allow for
ongoing learning; and (d) attend to the broader policy context and ensure that existing rules
and authorities allow for and facilitate coordination.
Broad Social, Cultural, and Political Settings
An obvious way to promote conservation through public policy is to build support for
conservation in the electorate, so that public officials give conservation prominence on their agendas.
Of course, even if that support exists, barriers hinder its translation into policy action. Investments in
building support for conservation through messaging and social marketing occur at city, county, and
regional scales, in collaborative settings, and are pursued by universities, scientific organizations, and
environmental NGOs. Environmental challenges like nonrenewable energy and climate change have
led to the creation of independent information and communication organizations devoted solely to
these issues. A growing body of research is available on how people process and internalize
information and how to engage audiences (including on scientific or technical topics) and to address
or circumvent belief in misinformation.
Selected Findings—Broad Social, Cultural, and Political Settings

Because most citizens have little direct interaction with the institutions or organizations that
manage risk, they establish risk perceptions based on other cues and indirect sources of
information, such as the media.

Three strategies have been identified that can increase the effectiveness of countering
misinformation: (a) “warnings” that coincide with exposure to misinformation, (b) repetition
of a retraction or correction without repeating the misinformation, and (c) corrections that tell
an alternative story that can fill the “coherence gap” otherwise left when a belief is called into
question. The last strategy has been found to be most effective.
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
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
When presenting new or corrective information, it is often critical to do it in a way that
provides identity or self-affirmation—a way that supports or is consistent with a conclusion
that affirms the audience’s worldview.

Social marketing campaigns should focus on building and supporting social capital and should
work through existing social networks rather than appealing to private individuals. The most
significant gains from social marketing may be realized by targeting networks, civil society
organizations, and other broadly defined “communities.”
A Case Example—Florida Ranchland Environmental Services Project
One case study on the origins and structure of a new payment for ecosystem services (PES)
program in Florida helps illustrate how basic principles of collaborative decisionmaking brought
stakeholder agreement on the implementation of a market-like environmental program. The Florida
program has market-like features designed to encourage private landowners—in this case, cattle
ranchers—to supply ecosystem services. The program took many years to develop and implement and
involved collaboration among a wide variety of stakeholders.
Selected Findings—Florida Ranchland Environmental Services Project

A combination of broad-based technical understanding and facilitation skills were important
both to the process and to the ultimate design of the program, given the need to reconcile the
participants’ often differing interests in the collaboration.

Designing a PES program demands the willingness and the opportunity to “learn while doing.”
Learning while doing has implications for program design. First, one needs pilot sites and
funding to support them. Second, one needs time to learn through conversations and
experimentation to reach agreement among the collaborators.

One must develop credible technical arguments to support the PES design. Credibility can be
enhanced via transparent, iterative interactions around technical analysis, and by engaging
credible and trusted scientific experts.
Case Example—Communicating Climate Change
Despite the significant amount of research on climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as
efforts to build public awareness and connect science and decisionmaking, broad awareness of the
available research on climate change messaging, communications, and social marketing is lacking.
Many research findings are nested within more overarching communications and marketing research,
including the importance of knowing the audience, using narratives and frames in keeping with
audience worldviews, identifying trusted community messengers, and using stories and imagery to
capture attention and help messages stick. Research suggests that interventions could have broader
and deeper impact by targeting social networks and horizontal marketing between organizations.
Although some of the findings may seem straightforward (e.g., using metaphors, making messages
personal, and appealing to the heart over the head), their implementation is still uncommon in many
professional, academic, and scientific spheres.
Selected Findings—Communicating Climate Change

The majority of climate change messaging is analytical, despite overwhelming evidence from
social psychology that the experiential processing system is a much stronger motivator for
action.
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
Shifting from frames focused on the probability of climate change to frames emphasizing
climate risks may better motivate behavioral change. Many people are cognizant of lowprobability, high-consequence events and the need to address them (e.g., by purchasing fire
insurance).

Climate change communications need to use carefully selected metaphors and examples that
prompt new ways of thinking about the personal relevance of climate change.

Individualistic framing of climate change may be problematic. Some behavioral and social
scientists argue that communication processes need to promote civic engagement and public
dialogue, rather than focusing on small-scale behavior change.
Conclusion
The social sciences have a lot to say about how conservation programs work, how conservation
science (natural science) is interpreted and acted on by individuals and institutions, and how
environmental advocates can motivate green behaviors. A recurring theme in our synthesis is the
cognitive and behavioral implications of complexity. Conservation and environmental issues are
distinctive in that they often involve large-scale, interconnected social and biophysical phenomena and
trigger correspondingly diverse social reactions and conflicts. Conservation science plays a
schizophrenic role in this complexity. In helping us understand and communicate the workings of the
natural world, science provides important tools to help people grapple with the unknown. However, as
conservation science deepens, it also reinforces the complexities and uncertainties associated with
both environmental problems and their possible solutions. It may be tempting for conservation
advocates to think that, if only the public understood “the science,” they would be converted to the
cause.
However, even if “the science” is conclusive, the social implications rarely are. More typically, the
science is not conclusive and its communication to “publics” reveals uncertainties, opening the door to
doubt. Thus, better science by itself, conducted and communicated in isolation from the social
interests it is meant to inform, may have a limited contribution to conservation advocacy. Much more
promising is the integration of science with collaborative processes that bring stakeholders and
knowledge providers together to iteratively frame the issues and develop data, tools, policies, and
solutions.
A contribution of our report is the organizational distinction between individual, collaborative,
and social behavior. We think that this is a useful device for drawing distinctions among the very
diverse social science disciplines, theories, and applications reviewed. We think that collaborative
behaviors are of particular ongoing relevance to conservation advocates. However, too much can be
made of the distinctions. Social messaging clearly relies on individual-scale psychological factors, not
just social norms. Collaborations are collections of individuals, and so on. Our analysis of business
behavior is perhaps the place where the distinctions most clearly dissolve.
Businesses are themselves collaborations of individuals, leading to analyses of both the role of the
individual in a business (as employee, manager, or shareholder) and the ways in which individuals
cooperate as members of the same business. Also, businesses routinely find it in their interest to
collaborate with the communities in which they operate and with government and NGO stakeholders.
They are also both influenced by social norms (e.g., current feelings regarding tobacco or genetically
modified organisms) and manipulators of those norms via sophisticated marketing resources. Of
course, they are ultimately beholden to the consumer, in all his or her irrational, biased glory.
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Despite the wide expanse of research surveyed in this study, empirical examination of natural
resource conservation behaviors per se remains thin. To date, conservation practice has been
dominated by natural scientists. Conservation behavior has long been an interest of social scientists,
but is often pursued from the desktop rather than the field. Philosophical, not just practical barriers
have also inhibited joint understanding. But that is all quickly changing. Conservation NGOs
increasingly embrace social goals as measures of their conservation effectiveness. Solutions-oriented
natural scientists see human behavior as the key to making their science matter. And social scientists
have become, not only more ecologically sophisticated, but also better at communicating the social
importance of natural systems.
These trends suggest that ecological–behavioral conservation studies and interventions are poised
to take an important step forward. Given that the complexities of human behavior clearly matter to
conservation outcomes, we hope that this report will promote discussion of next steps.
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
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CATALYSTS FOR CONSERVATION: EXPLORING BEHAVIORAL
SCIENCE INSIGHTS FOR NATURAL RESOURCE INVESTMENTS
Lynn Scarlett, James Boyd, and Anna Brittain
with contributions from Leonard Shabman and Tim Brennan
Introduction
On July 26, 1943, news headlines in Los Angeles exclaimed that the city was under attack, not by
foreign intruders but by a domestic threat—smog. Two decades later, an oily stew of polluted waters
in the Cuyahoga River caught fire. Then Love Canal, an untamed depository of chemical wastes,
erupted into the news with reports of toxins leaking into the soils of surrounding neighborhoods.
These events galvanized environmental action in the United States, motivating civic, business, and
legislative responses. Achievements were significant. Air is cleaner; some waste sites have been
cleaned up; iconic species like the bald eagle once again thrive. Yet environmental challenges—in the
United States and globally—persist and evolve in their extent and complexity.
The cartoon character, Pogo, quipped that “we have met the enemy and he is us.” The quip seems
apt in contemplating the challenges of addressing persistent environmental problems. These
challenges link to the attitudes, choices, and actions of individuals, families, communities, businesses,
lawmakers, and nations. Ultimately, their resolution depends on scientific knowledge, technology
developments, economic incentives, legal and institutional innovations, and, most importantly, public
awareness, interest, and capacity to act.
As the Pogo quip suggests, the “people factor” looms large. Increasingly, environmental challenges
are characterized as “wicked problems,” in which formulating the problem and specifying the soughtafter outcome often is the problem.2 These problems present inherent trade-offs among many
environmental management choices and sometimes significant distributional effects. Environmental
interventions can impact people, their traditions, their communities, and their livelihoods—affecting
some more than others. Even defining problems can evoke controversy, provoke skepticism, and stall
action.
Today, scientific uncertainties, complexities, interconnectedness, and the need to coordinate
across scales and institutions amplify the difficulties. Consider the scale of just a handful of current
environmental challenges. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions, linked to a changing climate, increased 16-fold worldwide between 1900 and
2008. The emissions spring from actions of billions of people, thousands of companies, and the policy
choices of all nations. The International Risk Governance Council reports that an estimated 25 percent
of fish stocks are overexploited or fully depleted. Some marine resources have dimensions suitable for
action by one community or nation; others require regional or international action. Even within a
single nation, like the United States, challenges involve actions of millions of people, dozens of
2
K. Leong, D. J. Decker, T. B. Lauber, D. B. Raik, and W. F. Siemer, “Overcoming Jurisdictional Boundaries through Stakeholder
Engagement and Collaborative Governance: Lessons Learned from White-Tailed Deer Management in the US,” in Beyond the Rural
Divide: Cross-Continental Perspectives on the Differentiated Countryside and Its Regulation, ed. K. Anderson et al. (United Kingdom:
Emerald Group, 2009).
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
9
communities, and multiple states. In the western United States, for example, a recent Bureau of
Reclamation report projects prospects of severe droughts lasting as long as 50 years, presenting
significant water supply–demand challenges for seven states. The actions of one state in the Colorado
River Basin affect all the others.
What does this setting mean for thinking about the ingredients of successful action? Insights
drawn from many forms of expertise and experiences are relevant. Scientists offer insights about “how
the world works”—its physical, chemical, biological, and other components, functions, and systems.
Economists offer tools for examining costs, benefits, trade-offs, incentives, and their relationship to
public and private institutions. Political scientists assess governance, public attitudes, and
decisionmaking by both the public and its representatives. Sociologists and psychologists probe the
“people factor”—why do people think what they think, how do values and attitudes form, and how do
they affect choices and actions? And, of course, there is the looming presence of communications—
how messages form and how people respond to different messages and different delivery modes.
Many forms of knowledge” come into play in efforts to define, describe, and determine responses
to environmental challenges. But purveyors of environmental actions—whether governments,
nonprofit organizations and foundations, civil society, or the business community—still struggle to
bring all these “knowledges” together to motivate and sustain environmental improvements. They
struggle to inform public attitudes, public policies, and on-the-ground actions with scientific
knowledge. They struggle to heighten individual awareness of environmental issues and to help
translate that awareness into meaningful actions. They struggle to catalyze and engage communities,
economic sectors, and lawmakers to address environmental problems.
This report synthesizes insights from multiple social and behavioral science research disciplines to
shed light on environmental attitudes and corresponding behaviors. Because of the breadth of
relevant research, the report is not exhaustive; instead, it presents selected highlights of this research.
This information can enhance efforts to successfully engage individuals in saving energy, recycling
water, or undertaking countless other personal actions that reduce environmental impacts. It can help
agencies mobilize communities and companies in efforts to protect sage grouse across 11 states, or
sustain water supplies in small and large watersheds, or reduce the impacts of energy or mineral
extraction. It may help nations communicate environmental challenges and work in concert to address
them.
This report is written primarily for the benefit of environmental nonprofit organizations,
environmental entrepreneurs, and philanthropies interested in advancing environmental goals and
missions. The question for such individuals and institutions is: How might one influence behavior so
that those goals are more likely to be met? In this context, behavioral insights yield instrumental
insights—that is, they describe ways in which behavior can be influenced to move toward a given goal.
The social sciences also sometimes consider what those goals should be. It is one thing to ask how, say,
to influence people to drink less soda (an instrumental question); it is another thing to argue that
drinking less soda is good for an individual or for society. Because this report is written for those who
begin with an interest in advancing environmental goals, our focus is on what is known about how
attitudes form and what influences environmentally significant behavior. Our purpose is not to
presume to articulate what values people should hold or how they should prioritize them.
Part One provides a broad overview of relevant issues drawn from the literature, including a
summary of challenges associated with framing and understanding conservation attitudes and
behaviors. Part Two examines these attitudes and behaviors within four related, but distinguishable,
areas of inquiry—individual, commercial, community, and sociopolitical. Parts Three and Four provide
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case examples that illustrate some of the report’s key themes. We conclude with a summary of findings
in Part Five.
Part One: Overview—Theories of Attitude Formation and Behavior
Human values, attitudes, motivations, and actions affect environmental conditions and shape
conservation behavior.3 We define environmental behavior as the decisions and choices that (a) affect
the efficient and effective use of natural resources; (b) reduce waste (energy, water, material, etc.); (c)
reduce pollution; and (d) facilitate management of terrestrial and marine ecosystems to restore,
enhance, or preserve these ecosystems, their functions, and interconnected biodiversity. The extent
and success of environmental actions depend, not only on understanding conservation ecology, but
also on the economic, social, and cultural processes that influence such behavior.
The social sciences provide frameworks and experience relevant to understanding the
development and evaluation of human attitudes and actions and the processes of individual and social
change. Insights from psychology, decision science, organization theory, political science, public
administration, economics, social anthropology, marketing, sociology, and communications studies are
specifically relevant. In addition, a growing literature on the sociology of science explores how
scientific information relevant to environmental issues is developed, communicated, comprehended,
and applied in organizational and social settings.
I. Challenges Associated with a Broad Overview
The literature on attitude formation and the relationship between attitudes and actions is
extensive and includes a vast subset of research specifically focused on environmental attitudes and
behavior.4 This literature spans at least four decades. Several challenges complicate the distillation of
this research and any attempts to draw conclusions from it.

What constitutes environmental action or behavior? Much behavior that is environmentally
significant results from actions undertaken for other purposes, but which nonetheless impact
the environment. In some cases, these actions (for example, electricity generation, mineral
extraction, or commercial fishing) have environmental consequences that may be more
extensive than individual consumption or household behavioral choices. Some social and
behavioral research focuses on what forces shape and influence environmental attitudes and
behaviors that are directly intended to reduce environmental impacts.5 Other research focuses
on factors that influence environmental outcomes even where such outcomes are not the
3
We use the term “conservation” to reflect our primary focus on natural resources and ecosystem management but recognize that
the discussion is also relevant to a broader suite of environmental issues, including human exposures to environmental risks,
materials usage in production and consumption, and related public policies.
4
Thomas Dietz, and Paul Stern, eds., Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making (Washington, DC:
National Academies Press, 2008), http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12434.html.
5
See, for example, Stuart Cottrell, “Influence of Sociodemographics and Environmental Attitudes on General Responsible
Environmental Behavior among Recreational Boaters, Environment and Behavior 35, no. 3 (2003): 347–375; Thomas Dietz, Paul C.
Stern, and Gregory A. Guagnano, “Social Structural and Social Psychological Bases of Environmental Concern,” Environment and
Behavior 30 (1998): 450–471; Niklas Fransson, and Tommy Garling, “Environmental Concern: Conceptual Definitions, Measurement
Methods, and Research Findings,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 19 (1999): 369–382; Jody Hines, Harold R. Hungerford, and
Audrey N. Tomera, “Analysis and Synthesis of Research on Responsible Environmental Behavior: A Meta-Analysis,” Journal of
Environmental Education 18, no. 2 (1986/87): 1–8; Paul C. Stern, “Psychology and the Science of Human–Environment
Interactions,” American Psychologist 55, no. 5 (2000): 523–530.
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
11
primary motivating purpose of the individual or organizational activity.6 Others distinguish
between behaviors that directly cause environmental change and behaviors that are more
indirect—for example, behaviors that shape the context in which choices are made.7 Finally,
one can measure environmentally significant behaviors in terms of intentions or outcomes;
this distinction “highlights the possibility that environmental intent may fail to result in
environmental impact.”8

What kinds of environmentally significant behaviors are relevant? Conservation and
environmental behaviors take many forms, including personal consumption patterns, ways
people manage their private property, actions in the workplace, membership in conservation
organizations, engagement in protests and activism, support for environmentally significant
public policies, and so on. The relationships among values, attitudes, and actions may vary,
depending on the types of environmental and conservation activities.

What are the actual effects of behavior intended to enhance conservation or environmental
outcomes, and how does information about these effects influence attitudes and actions?
Individuals and organizations may support particular actions, believing that they will be
environmentally beneficial, even if the actions produce little conservation benefit. For example,
recycling household and commercial waste may not reduce overall environmental impacts
(life-cycle analyses of certain types of recycling indicate that such efforts do not always yield
net benefits in terms of energy, water, and material savings or emissions reductions). In other
words, improving environmental outcomes involves more than changing attitudes and
intentions. This observation suggests that those pursuing environmental improvements often
need to grapple with complex sources of information to select actions that produce net
environmental benefits. The importance of such specialized information to the identification
of, and motivations for, environmentally significant actions suggests that research on how
individuals, organizations, and communities receive and react to scientific and technical
analyses is particularly relevant to efforts to enhance conservation. The complexities of
understanding and measuring environmental outcomes also underscore the importance of lifecycle analysis, net benefits analysis, and related kinds of analytical tools, though a review of
those tools is beyond the scope of this report.
II. Social Science Insights on Behavior: A Broad Summary
Theories and research on environmental values, attitudes, motivations, and actions have
proliferated over the past four decades in the fields of psychology, sociology, economics, organization
theory, political science, and public administration, among others. Other research—for example, on
risk perceptions, knowledge transfers, corporate cultures and management, and multijurisdictional
governance—also offers relevant insights for understanding attitudes and environmentally significant
behavior. We define such behavior as “the extent to which [the behavior] changes the availability of
materials or energy from the environment or alters the structure and dynamics of ecosystems or the
biosphere itself.”9
6
For example, Eugene Rosa and Thomas Dietz suggest that understanding the forces of global environmental change comes less
from understanding the drivers of environmental impacts and more from understanding what drives reductions in those impacts.
Eugene Rosa and Thomas Dietz, “Climate Change and Society: Speculation, Construction and Scientific Investigation,” International
Sociology 13 no. 4 (1998): 438.
7
Paul Stern, “Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior,” Journal of Social Issues 56 no. 3 (2000): 407–424.
8
Ibid., 408.
9
Paul Stern, “Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior,” Journal of Social Issues 56 no. 3 (2000): 407.
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
12
Some aspects of environmentally significant behavior remain poorly understood. For example, a
well-recognized “value–action” gap has been demonstrated by research showing that environmental
values do not necessarily result in corresponding environmental action.10 Simple, transferable
explanations are elusive. Similarly, research on the relationships among environmental attitudes,
cultural context, and cognitive biases is a relatively new field. Notable gaps remain in our
understanding of the decision processes, institutions, organizational rules, communities, and broader
political units that affect environmental attitudes and behavior. But despite these knowledge gaps,
some broad conclusions can be drawn from the extensive theoretical, empirical, and practical research
available to us.
A. Attitude Formation and Behavior
Several consistent themes recur, across different research disciplines, in much of the work on
attitudes and environmentally significant behavior. These include four general observations.

Multiple factors shape attitudes and link attitudes to environmentally significant behavior.

Motivations for environmentally significant behavior vary by the type of action.

Many different types of environmental issues unfold at different scales and within widely
varying decision settings, affecting which participants, attitudes, and behaviors are relevant.

The relevance, credibility, and perceived legitimacy of information affect the learning and use
of information.
A-1. Multiple Factors Shape Attitudes and Link Attitudes to Behavior
Some early research on environmental attitudes and behavior applied a linear model, assuming
that knowledge was linked to attitudes, which in turn affected behavior.11 Subsequent research has
largely invalidated the linear model.12 Not surprisingly, environmental behavior is more difficult to
predict and involves numerous interrelated factors, though “lack of knowledge explains some of the
weak relationship between environmental concern and environmentally responsible behavior.”13
Attitude formation itself involves more than knowledge; it involves a combination of knowledge,
affect, and intentions.14 Even accounting for these factors, behavior does not flow directly from
“attitudes” or “values.” Instead, attitudes (including norms, beliefs, and values) interrelate with the
situational context that influences perceived costs and benefits and with other competing values that,
jointly, affect environmentally significant behavior. But even the perception of costs and benefits is
10
Although a growing body of research has explored this gap, the factors that explain it are various and context specific. Andrew
Darnton, Jake Elster-Jones, Karen Lucas, and Mike Brooks, “Promoting Pro-Environmental Behaviour: Existing Evidence to Inform
Better Policy Making: Summary Report,” study prepared for the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Centre for
Sustainable Development, University of Westminster, no date).
11
Stuart Cottrell, “Influence of Sociodemographics and Environmental Attitudes on General Responsible Environmental Behavior
among Recreational Boaters,” Environment and Behavior 35 no. 3 (2003): 347–375. See, for example, L. Ajzen and M. Fishbein,
“Attitudinal and Normative Variables as Predictors of Specific Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 27 (1973): 41–
57; M. Fishbein and L. Ajzen, “Attitudes toward Objects as Predictors of Single and Multiple Behavioral Criteria,” Psychological
Review 81 (1974): 59–74; M. P. Malony, M. Ward, and G. Braucht, “A Revised Scale for the Measurement of Ecological Attitudes
and Knowledge,” American Psychologist 30 (1975): 787–790.
12
Cottrell, “Influence of Sociodemographics,” 349.
13 Niklas Fransson and Tommy Garling, “Environmental Concern: Conceptual Definitions, Measurement Methods, and
Research Findings,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 19 (1999): 369–382. The authors point to 17 studies that show that
knowledge of issues and of behavior strategies were important moderators of whether attitudes predicted behavior (373).
14
Ibid. Intentions refers to a determination to behave in a certain way; affect as used here refers to an emotional state.
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
13
complex and includes, for example, community expectations, legal and institutional factors, habits and
routines, and personal capabilities, along with direct monetary impacts.15
In the 1990s, several researchers analyzed a large data set on environmental attitudes and
behavior.16 This research shows that general support for environmental goals (positive environmental
attitudes) is associated with the expectation of harmful consequences to the environment and
adherence to a cluster of values, such as altruism, among other variables. Experimental tests have
shown that activation of environmental behavior requires both an awareness of adverse consequences
associated with an environmentally damaging behavior and a sense of personal responsibility for
those consequences.17 But even where such awareness and sense of responsibility exist, pro-social
(environmental) norms “will not be activated in situations where the personal costs are perceived as
too high.”18 Stern notes that “the key to behavioral change is the immediate context of behavior, not
deeper values.”19 The link between attitudes and behavior is, thus, strongest when contextual factors
do not impose high costs or constraints.20
Setting details aside, the overall conclusion is that conservation and environmental strategies
aimed at behavior change should focus not on isolated factors, but rather on bundles of them. In this
regard, consider Gardner and Stern, who describe several types of interventions perceived as
potentially affecting environmentally significant behavior.21 These include, for example: (a) moral and
educational interventions, (b) material incentive structures, and (c) community (institutional)
management. These types of social interventions are likely to be more powerful in concert than in
isolation.
A1-a. Moral and Educational Interventions: The contextual nature of environmental behavior
suggests significant limits to both moral and educational initiatives, and, indeed, such efforts have
shown limited results in empirical analyses. For example, research shows that “education
interventions by themselves have little or no effect in promoting new pro-environmental behaviors.”22
However, research regarding the influence of education points to some specific opportunities. As
noted earlier, understanding the potential adverse environmental and social consequences of certain
behaviors can contribute to attitude formation and change. However, the understanding of how
scientific knowledge of specific environmental effects influences attitudes and motivations to act is not
well understood.23
A1-b. Incentives: A voluminous economics literature points to the influence of financial incentives
(or disincentives) on environmental behavior. Although such incentives and disincentives affect
behavior, their influence is determined (and sometimes limited) by other factors, including personal
and social norms, knowledge, and institutional capacities.
15
Paul Stern, “Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior,” Journal of Social Issues 56 no. 3 (2000): 407–
424.
16
Thomas Dietz, Paul C. Stern, and Gregory A. Guagnano, “Social Structural and Social Psychological Bases of Environmental
Concern,” Environment and Behavior 30 (1998): 450–471.
17
Paul Stern and Stuart Oskamp, “Managing Scarce Environmental Resources,” in Handbook of Environmental Psychology, ed. D.
Stokols and I. Altman (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1987), 1055.
18
Paul Stern, “Psychology and the Science of Human–Environment Interactions,” American Psychologist 55, no. 5 (2000): 525.
19
Ibid.
20
G. A. Guagnano, P. Stern, and T. Dietz, “Influences on Attitude–Behavior Relationships: A Natural Experiment with Curbside
Recycling, Environment and Behavior 27 (1995): 699–718.
21
G. T. Gardner and P. Stern, Environmental Problems and Human Behavior (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996).
22
Paul C. Stern, “Psychology and the Science of Human–Environment Interactions,” American Psychologist 55 no. 5 (2000): 526.
23
Ibid.
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
14
These confounding factors are evident in research regarding price incentives to motivate
household participation in recycling, for example. The success of pay-as-you-throw recycling
programs that offer free recycling alongside waste fees pegged to the amount of trash disposed
depends both on the size of the fee and on program design (whether and what kind of trash bags or
containers are used, program complexity, information provided, and so on). Attempts to site solid
waste facilities reveal similar limits to the role of monetary incentives in influencing behavior,
particularly where the proposed actions are perceived, at least in part, in moral terms. For example,
changes in the levels of host-community compensation for the siting of waste facilities have resulted in
little variation in opposition to siting.24 Researchers note the role of moral considerations over the role
of financial compensation.25 This research also reveals the importance of direct citizen engagement in
decisionmaking and its positive role in facilitating siting decisions.26
A1-c. Community Management: Extensive research points to the relevance and potential of placebased, community interventions to identify adverse environmental consequences and galvanize
actions to address them—even in contexts of conflicting values and environmental attitudes. The
following highlights recur in research on community engagement and community environmental
management.

Community engagement is correlated with enhanced effectiveness of conservation actions,
though effectiveness also depends on process and institutional design.

Collaborative and community-engagement processes can influence norms and actions by
building trust and by providing social cues that affect environmental attitudes.

Collaborative processes influence problem-framing, which relates to one particular
factor—perceptions of the capacity to act—identified as important to translating attitudes
into action.
Summarizing research on the effectiveness of different types of interventions, Stern notes that
“even incentive- and community-based approaches rarely produce much change on their own. By far
the most effective change programs involve combinations.”27 In short, no type of intervention appears
to affect behavior on its own. Affirming this conclusion, a recent study of existing evidence on
environmental behavior changes notes that behaviors are complex, with different audiences behaving
differently and requiring tailored interventions; and behavior change is best motivated by “circular”
rather than “linear” social processes, where partnerships that involve continuous learning are more
effective than “passive audience” approaches, and feedback is critical.28 Reflecting on this complexity,
the authors of that study conclude: “Policies that aim to encourage pro-environmental behavior need
to reflect these complexities. They should combine multiple types of instruments in a ‘package’ of
measures.”29
Because of the relevance of this work to understanding effective conservation, we provide greater
detail and offer specific examples in subsequent sections (including the section on community action
in Part Two and a Florida ecosystem services payment project in Part Three).
24
Carissa Schively, “Understanding the NIMBY and LULU Phenomena: Reassessing Our Knowledge Base and Informing Future
Research,” Journal of Planning Literature 21 (2007): 260.
25
Ibid.
26
Robin R. Jenkins, Kelly M. Maguire, and Cynthia Morgan, Host Community Compensation and Municipal Solid Waste Landfills
(National Center for Environmental Economics, US Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], 2002).
27
P. Stern, “Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior,” Journal of Social Issues 56, no. 3 (2000): 420.
28
Andrew Darnton et al., “Promoting Pro-Environmental Behaviour,” Executive Summary.
29
Ibid., 5.
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
15
A-2. Motivations for Environmentally Significant Behavior Vary by Type of Action
No uniform system exists for the classification of types of environmentally significant behavior (or
actions), which include the following.

Personal and household consumption decisions, which, in turn, break down into the purchase
and use of major goods, such as houses and automobiles; the purchase of smaller or daily
consumption items; household maintenance and operational decisions, such as thermostat
settings for heating and cooling; and waste disposal decisions.

Resource stewardship by private landowners and managers, including farmers; by landholding
corporations; and by the public sector managing public lands, waters, and other resources.

Environmental citizenship and activism, including (a) membership in, and financial support for,
environmental organizations and (b) support for public policies, environmental movements,
and campaigns.

Organizational engagement, including participation in the workplace, professional societies, or
other groups that design products, set standards, or undertake other actions that have direct
or indirect environmental consequences.
Several studies have shown that different behavior types may be motivated by different patterns
of sociopsychological and sociodemographic predictors.30 One examination of different behavior
types—consumer behaviors, environmental citizenship, policy support, and activism—concludes that
one can predict each of these types of activities by different patterns of norms, beliefs, and values.31
That study further concludes that behavior is affected by a combination of personal values, knowledge
of the adverse effects of certain actions, a sense of personal responsibility, knowledge of remedial
actions, and the capacity to take action.
In addition, research on environmentally significant behavior suggests that the factors that
determine individual political action are not the same as those for collective action.32 Environmental
knowledge and a belief in the efficacy of individual action, among other factors, are more important for
individual than for collective action. In contrast, the extent of acceptance of “an environmentalist
creed” better explains collective environmental action.33
Because drivers of behavior change vary by type of conservation action, some researchers suggest
a problem-oriented approach to behavior change strategies—one that identifies specific
environmentally important activities and determines “whose actions and which actions matter
most.”34 Following this line of analysis, Stern and Oskamp suggest that environmental information may
be more effective if it is specific, rather than general.35
At least one meta-analysis provides support for this focused approach to change strategies,
showing a stronger relationship between eventual environmental action and positive attitudes toward
30
Paul Stern, “Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior,” Journal of Social Issues 56, no. 3 (2000): 407–
424.
31
Ibid., 420.
32
Donald E. Blake, “Contextual Effects on Environmental Attitudes and Behavior,” Environment and Behavior 33 (2001): 708–725,
http://eab.sagepub.com/content/33/5/708.
33
Ibid.
34
Paul C. Stern, “Psychology and the Science of Human–Environment Interactions,” American Psychologist 55, no. 5 (2000): 527–
528.
35
Paul Stern and Stuart Oskamp, “Managing Scarce Environmental Resources,” in Handbook of Environmental Psychology, ed. D.
Stokols and I. Altman (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1987), 1055.
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
16
specific actions than between eventual actions and more general positive attitudes toward
environmental protection.36 Stern and Oskamp note that the failure to see a causal relationship
between environmental attitudes and behavior appears, in part, to result from a “mismatch in
specificity between the attitude measures, which are usually general, and behavioral indexes, which
are usually specific.”37
A-3. Different Types of Environmental Issues Unfold at Different Scales and in Different
Settings
Environmental issues vary significantly in their characteristics, with implications for identifying
the decisionmakers, information, and actions relevant to addressing them. Many environmental
problems comprise “commons” dilemmas, as described by Elinor Ostrom and others.38 Other
environmental issues have been described using a “needs, opportunities, abilities” model relating to
consumer attitudes and behaviors.39 Charles Vlek usefully categorizes environmental problems in
terms of levels of risk (personal, indoor, local, regional, fluvial, continental, and global).40 He notes that,
at each scale, different actors—individual, organizational, institutional—are relevant (and potentially
responsible) for diminishing harmful environmental effects.41 Addressing many environmental
problems requires coordination among different actors. Problems at all scales or levels of risk involve
some socio-behavioral considerations.
Recognizing these many differences, Stern and Oskamp suggest that “the best way to proceed is to
study carefully the particular environmental problem of concern before trying to apply psychological
theories.”42 Relevant questions, according to Stern and Oskamp, include “which actors can make an
important difference by ameliorating, exacerbating, or preventing the problem? And for each type of
actor, which actions have a large impact on the problem? Asking these questions requires a researcher
to examine the environmental problem before applying theory, but to do so in a way that makes
psychological theory relevant.”43
A-4. Relevance, Credibility, and Perceived Legitimacy Affect Learning and the Use of
Information
Substantial research concludes that the relationship between knowledge, attitudes, and behavior
is neither linear nor simple. However, research also indicates that knowledge of alternative actions
and their environmental consequences plays some role in activating behavior to reduce environmental
impacts. This relevance underscores the significance of better understanding (a) how knowledge
transfer and information content affect learning, perceived legitimacy of information, and the uses of
knowledge in shaping choices and motivating action and (b) what mechanisms enhance the
effectiveness of efforts to link science and decisionmaking.
Two clusters of research are particularly relevant to this understanding. The first cluster is the
growing body of research on the relationship between knowledge and affect, which helps to explain
36
Niklas Fransson and Tommy Garling, “Environmental Concern: Conceptual Definitions, Measurement Methods, and Research
Findings,” Journal of Environmental Psychology 19 (1999): 369–382.
37
Stern and Oskamp, “Managing Scarce Environmental Resources,” 1053.
38
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1991).
39
Charles Vlek, “Essential Psychology for Environmental Policy Making,” International Journal of Psychology 35, no. 2 (2010): 152.
40
Ibid., 156
41
Ibid.
42
Stern and Oskamp, “Managing Scarce Environmental Resources,” 1049.
43
Ibid.
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
17
attitude formation. The second cluster relates more specifically to science and decisionmaking in the
context of environmental problems. This cluster addresses the design of “use-inspired” research, for
example, and examines the conditions for effective communication and use of scientific and technical
knowledge in decisionmaking.
Part One—Summary of Key Findings

The link between attitudes and behavior is strongest when contextual factors don’t impose
high costs or constraints.

By far the most effective strategies for influencing attitudes and behavior involve combinations
of interventions.

Drivers of behavior change vary by type of conservation action, underscoring the potential
relevance of an environmental problem–oriented approach to behavior change strategies.

Different audiences behave differently and require tailored interventions.

Approaches that involve continuous learning are more effective than “passive audience”
approaches.

Environmental information may be more effective if it is specific rather than general.
Part Two: Social and Behavioral Research and Applications
In Part One, we provided an overview of theories, research, and brief examples that illustrate
theories of behavior and knowledge formation/learning and evidence of their power to explain or
change attitudes and behavior. We now apply an “individual, commercial, community, and society”
organizational structure to our review and address questions directly pertinent to environmental
actions and conservation. Though we organize the discussion around individuals, commerce,
communities, and broader societal contexts, many of the ideas apply to all four behavioral contexts.
For example, risk analysis and perception and marketing insights apply to all four categories. Although
much of the discussion summarizes theories and research findings across a spectrum of disciplines, we
also offer several examples to provide a richer sense of situational details that can affect attitudes and
actions. In Part Three, we offer a longer case study of a Florida ecosystem services payment program
that illustrates many of the broader themes of this report. Part Four provides a closer look at climate
change and issues of communication, attitude formation, and associated responses.
I. How Individuals Think and Act
The incentives, motivations, information, relationships, norms, and values of individuals are
important to conservation design. Examples include “working landscapes” where conservation goals
are pursued in partnership with farmers or other property owners; conservation actions in
relationship to commercial fishing operations; or household-level stewardship initiatives. Policies
under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) initially failed to appreciate disincentives created by the ESA
that reduced landowner motivations to protect and enhance habitat. Identification of the disincentives
led to Safe Harbor Agreements and other policies that enhanced conservation outcomes. In China,
incentive payments to households to monitor illegal wood harvesting resulted, unexpectedly, in the
splitting of larger households into smaller units and increased demand for fuel, which undermined
conservation goals. Other individual behavioral insights relate to conservation efforts directed at
families to motivate household-level changes in landscaping, home construction, and energy use. As a
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
18
general rule, however, behavioral insights have not been systematically incorporated into
conservation planning.
Individual behavior may seem limited in its potential for broad-scale influence, but in aggregate its
effects are significant. Including personal transportation and home electricity use, individual
households account for nearly one-third of carbon emissions in the United States.44 Improving energy
efficiency and conservation, using currently available and effective technologies, could reduce
emissions in this sector by 20 percent in 10 years, equivalent to more than 7 percent of national
emissions. With the application of innovative policy tools and emerging technologies, even larger
reductions are within reach.
Vandenbergh and colleagues argue that adopting the most successful interventions and scaling to
national coverage can be achieved only with insights from behavioral and social sciences and that laws
and policies benefit from reflecting empirically grounded behavioral principles.45 We begin our
discussion by focusing on insights from psychology and social psychology in five areas that have
important implications and ramifications for social and environmental outcomes. We then turn to
social norms (what others in a given social context do or say), whether within one’s network of family,
friends, and coworkers, or in a public context of strangers or relative strangers. Finally, we examine
the role of communication in framing and agenda setting.
A. Social Psychology
This section is organized around the following concepts: (a) cognition and affect; (b) heuristics,
framing, and priming; (c) the role of messengers and “liking;” (d) reciprocation and commitments; (e)
incentives and interacting motivations; and (f) defaults.
Social psychology insights can be categorized in a variety of ways, and semantic challenges
abound. For example, in The Social Animal, Elliot Aronson uses the categories of conformity,
communication and persuasion, social cognition, self-justification, aggression, prejudice, and liking.46
Social psychologist Robert Cialdini relies on the concepts of reciprocation, commitment and
consistency, social proof (or norms), liking, authority, and scarcity.47 Authors of a 2010 report
commissioned by the UK Institute for Government on influencing behavior through public policy use a
pneumonic device, MINDSPACE (Messenger, Incentives, Norms, Defaults, Salience, Priming, Affect,
Commitments, and Ego).48 All of these categorizations, however, include the concepts described below.
Scientists and other experts have often subscribed to a knowledge or information deficit view of
behavior: when people fail to behave in ways that are believed by experts to be in their own or
society’s best interest, the solution is to provide them with the knowledge they lack and/or persuade
them to change their attitudes. However, social psychologist Elliot Aronson draws a critical distinction
between informed opinions—which are primarily cognitive (“head” rather than “heart”) and,
therefore, open to change based on reasoning—and opinions that are both emotional and evaluative
(attitudes), which are extremely difficult to change, particularly with direct communication.49 One
44
M. Vandenbergh, P. Stern, G. Gardner, T. Dietz, and J. Gilligan, “Implementing the Behavioral Wedge: Designing and Adopting
Effective Carbon Emissions Reduction Programs,” Environmental Law Reporter 40 (2010): 10547–10554.
45
Ibid.
46
Elliot Aronson, The Social Animal, 9th ed. (New York: Worth Publishers, 2004), 1–514.
47 Robert Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, 3rd ed. (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007).
48
P. Dolan, M. Hallsworth, D. Halpern, D. King, and I. Vlaev, MINDSPACE: Influencing Behaviour through Public Policy (London: UK
Institute for Government, 2010), http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/our-work/better-policy-making/mindspacebehavioural-economics.
49
Aronson, Social Animal.
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meta-analysis of pro-environmental behavior found that “at least 80% of the factors influencing
behavior did not result from knowledge or awareness. And insofar as the better educated, higher
income, more advantaged minds are the first and easiest to change, inequalities in health and wellbeing may be widened by information campaigns.”50
Research and experience indicate that people are capable of systematic and deep analysis, but the
reflective mind has limited capacity. Often, decisions and actions are shaped by context, mental
shortcuts (heuristics), biases, and other subconscious responses, which Cialdini refers to as “click,
whirr” behaviors.51 “Once triggered by environmental features, these preconscious automatic
responses run to completion without any conscious monitoring.”52 These “automatic processes” have
been relatively neglected in policy discussions, perhaps because researchers and policymakers
underestimate their impact. When people are asked to predict their own sensitivity to “automatic
processes,” they often misjudge their own responses. When asked if a candidate’s physical appearance
affects their vote, or if their neighbors’ actions are important to their own, people tend to answer “no,”
even though their actual behavior suggests that the answer is “yes.”53 Given the demonstrated role of
in-built, subconscious reactions and responses, social psychology can provide insights into
environmental behavior change. As sociologists Thomas Dietz, Paul Stern, and Elke Weber assert in a
study on energy consumption, “We have to design programs for the ways real people make choices,
not for the formally rational decision-makers of economic theory.”54 Furthermore, this research
suggests that changing behavior without changing minds may often be cheaper and more effective.55
A-1. Cognition and Affect
“Cognition” refers to how people understand and process the world around them; through
thought, experience, and senses, people gain knowledge and form beliefs. “Affect” involves the role of
emotional associations in shaping decisions and actions. “Cold cognition” refers to the impacts of
external conditions and fact-based appeals that allow for reasoned and logical analysis and
decisionmaking, whereas “hot cognition” refers to the more charged and emotional situations and
appeals that can override logical reasoning and cause people to make what may seem to be irrational
judgments. Consider spot TV commercials for political issues or candidates. Some research shows that
these commercials are most effective when focused on highly charged issues that arouse strong
emotions. When opposing candidates fight back with facts and figures, the public gets bored, and when
people are scared or angry, such factual appeals are not very convincing.56
Memories also tend to be governed by “peak” moments, along with final impressions of a chain of
events.57 In addition, emotional arousal has been shown to increase people’s willingness to pass on
information, increasing the reach of an idea.58 Use of “gray” (recycled) water offers an illustration.
Although recycled water is often treated nearly to drinking water standards and is typically used for
landscaping, the mental association between what is flushed down toilets and what comes out of the
50
Dolan et al., MINDSPACE, 15.
Cialdini, Influence.
52
Dolan et al., MINDSPACE, 14.
53
Aronson, Social Animal, Cialdini, Influence.
54
Thomas Dietz, Paul Stern, and Elke Weber, “Reducing Carbon-Based Energy Consumption through Changes in Household
Behavior,” Daedalus 142, no. 1 (2013): 87.
55
Dolan et al., MINDSPACE.
56
Aronson, Social Animal.
57
Dolan et al., MINDSPACE.
58
S. Lewandowsky, U. Ecker, C. Seifert, N. Schwarz, and J. Cook, “Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and
Successful Debiasing,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 13, no. 3 (2012): 106–131.
51
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sprinklers has in some cases led to public resistance to its use and municipal restrictions or bans.
Peter Ditto, professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine, explores
the relationship between moral intuitions (often linked with strong emotional triggers) and factual
beliefs. Ditto helped to develop www.yourmorals.org. The site has garnered over 200,000 responses to
a moral foundations questionnaire. Results drawn from this site suggest that people often adjust their
benefit–cost beliefs to fit basic moral intuitions. In terms of political ideology biases, some research
also finds that this moral-to-factual coherence is significantly higher among conservatives.59
Fear is a particularly powerful emotion. Research suggests that it is unhelpful to create fear
without agency. Messages that arouse fear and are linked with specific instructions on how, when, and
where to take action (e.g., show bad flu symptoms, encourage people to get the flu shot, and give them
information on when and where the shots are available) are far more effective than purely fearinducing messages. Recent research indicates that people with high self-esteem are more likely than
those with low self-esteem to be moved to immediate action by fear-arousing messages. However, if
action can be taken later, people with low self-esteem are also more likely to be motivated by
communications arousing a great deal of fear.60 Research suggests that people can develop an
expectation of being shocked about certain issues, which can make these messages less effective and
require a shift to more counterintuitive messaging. These observations point to the importance of
seeking out insights (for example, through focus groups) on how best to present particular issues to
specific audiences.61
One relevant concept relating to cognition is confirmation bias or “motivated reasoning.” As
Aronson explains, “human cognition tends to be conservative—that is, we try to preserve that which is
already established—to maintain our preexisting knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and stereotypes.”62
“Motivated reasoning” refers to a phenomenon in which the desire to reach a certain conclusion biases
the processing of information related to that conclusion. According to Dolan, “people tend to pay little
attention to information that challenges an existing belief or hypothesis, and focus intently on
supportive information.”63 The mechanism behind motivated reasoning has been described as follows:
Motivated reasoners may discount, counter argue, or simply ignore new information that
challenges existing evaluation and affect …. Information that is congruent with expectations is
easily assimilated since it requires no effort to accept what one already knows is true. But
incongruent information interrupts normal processing and instead engages a process where
some effort must be expended to make sense of the world.64
The theory of motivated reasoning is increasingly being used to explain political discourse and
affiliations.65
A related issue is “cognitive dissonance,” in which “an inconsistency between beliefs and behavior
causes an uncomfortable psychological tension, sometimes implying that people change their beliefs
59
Brittany Liu and Peter Ditto, “What Dilemma? Moral Evaluation Shapes Factual Belief,” Social Psychological and Personality
Science 4, no. 3 (2013): 316–323.
60
Aronson, Social Animal.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid., 158.
63
Dolan et al., MINDSPACE.
64
David P. Redlawsk, “Hot Cognition or Cool Consideration? Testing the Effects of Motivated Reasoning and Political Decision
Making,” The Journal of Politics 64, no. 4 (2002): 1023.
65
Ibid.
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to fit their behavior instead of changing their behavior to fit their beliefs.”66 One example of cognitive
dissonance is the observation that members of Western societies that have the largest carbon
footprints may be more likely to believe that climate change problems are exaggerated. In a recent
meta-analysis of environmental behavior experiments, researchers found that treatments that
“accessed preexisting beliefs or attitudes and attempted to make participants behave in ways that
were consistent with those beliefs to reduce the dissonance” were among the most effective.67
In situations where people lack knowledge about a topic, studies show that they often look for an
initial anchor on which to base decisions (e.g., adding a 2 percent minimum payment to credit card
bills lowers the rate of repayment relative to the case where no minimum payment is specified). These
anchors can seem arbitrary. Consider one experiment in which people were asked to write down the
last two digits of their social security numbers before bidding in an auction. This arbitrary cue had a
demonstrable impact on their bids.68 Moreover, the influence of mental anchors can endure over long
periods of time and can influence decisions well past the conditions in which those anchors were
formed. This may mean that decisionmakers or others seeking to influence behavior may have added
influence if they act as an initial anchor, which may be easier to do at times when people are making
major life changes or entering new situations.69
A-2. Mental Shortcuts, Framing, and Priming
People often use mental shortcuts (heuristics) to help them make decisions. These shortcuts are
both necessary and useful, but they can also reinforce biases, prejudices, and ideological divides. Three
common heuristics are the representative, availability, and attitude heuristics.
The Representative Heuristic: A simple example of the representative heuristic is the belief that
high-quality products are more expensive. This belief can lead people to perhaps erroneously infer
that if something is expensive, it is also of high quality. Another example pertains to height: taller
people are, on average, paid more in the workplace, and, in the majority of presidential campaigns, the
taller candidate has won. People sometimes make the erroneous inference that people’s height relates
to their capabilities and their capacity for leadership. These sorts of heuristics are often used to form
quick opinions and judgments about other people. The most immediate information gained when
someone interacts with a new person—gender, race, attractiveness, and social status—provides a cue
that often guides thought and behavior.70 People are more likely to accept someone else’s behavior as
the norm, or to cooperate with them, if they exhibit even superficial similarities, such as dress. For
example, research in the days of pay phones showed that when an experimenter asking for change was
dressed as a student, the request would be granted more than two-thirds of the time by students who
were asked. Experimenters who dressed differently or unusually were granted the request less than
half the time. Similarly, requests to sign a petition meet with much higher rates of success when the
petitioner and subject are similarly attired.71
The Availability Heuristic: The availability heuristic refers to the tendency to make judgments
based on the ease of bringing specific examples to mind. The availability heuristic means that
66
Fredrik Carlsson and Olof Johansson-Stenman, “Behavioral Economics and Environmental Policy,” Annual Review of Resource
Economics 4 (2012): 79.
67
Richard Osbaldiston and John Paul Schott, “Environmental Sustainability and Behavioral Science: Meta-Analysis of
Proenvironmental Behavior Experiments,” Environment and Behavior 44, no. 2 (2012): 273.
68
Aronson, Social Animal.
69
Dolan et al., MINDSPACE.
70
Aronson, Social Animal.
71
Cialdini, Influence.
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emotional and vivid appeals and stories can have particularly strong and lasting effects, particularly
with repeated media coverage. For example, fewer people die each year from shark attacks than from
falling airplane parts, but, due to fear-arousing media coverage of shark attacks, most people would
guess the opposite. Similarly, the more television people watch, and hence the more reported and
fictionalized violence they see, the more they appear to significantly overestimate the amount of real
crime that occurs in the United States.72
The Attitude Heuristic: The attitude heuristic refers to how people’s underlying attitudes (or
“stored evaluations”) guide their decisions and beliefs. Research has found, for example, that “a
person’s attitudes play a major role in what he or she ‘knows’ to be true.”73 Furthermore, the more
strongly held an attitude, the more confidence people have in their judgments and the more they
overestimate the percentage of people agreeing with them. For instance, in a study exploring racial
bias toward aboriginal Australians, researchers found that only a very small percentage of the
population admitted strong prejudice, but those same respondents significantly overestimated the
percentage of the non-aboriginal population that agreed with them (70.9 percent). Those who didn’t
exhibit the bias believed that less than 50 percent of their compatriots shared their view.74
The Use of Heuristics and Framing: People are most likely to use heuristics when (a) they don’t
have time to think carefully about an issue, (b) they are overloaded with information, (c) the issue(s)
at stake are not particularly important to them, or (d) they have little reliable knowledge or
information to use to guide their decisions.75 It is well documented that people are made
uncomfortable by ambiguity and will, in fact, pay a lot—explicitly or implicitly—to avoid ambiguity.76
Reliance on heuristics may, in fact, be explained as a psychological strategy to minimize ambiguity’s
discomforts.
Because people often rely on heuristics, the ways in which issues and messages are framed can
have a particularly strong effect on beliefs and behavior. The cognitive psychologists Daniel Kahneman
and Amos Tversky used framing phenomena to interpret individual risk judgments and consumer
choices and found that “perception is reference dependent.”77 Consider the following description:
When you frame something … you emphasize one dimension of a complex issue over another,
calling attention to certain considerations and certain arguments more so than other
arguments. In the process, what you do is you communicate why an issue may or may not be a
problem, who or what is responsible for that problem and then what should be done. One of
the common misunderstandings about framing is that there can be something such as
unframed information. Every act of communication, whether intentional or not, involves some
type of framing.78
72
Aronson, Social Animal.
Ibid., 111.
74
Susan Watt and Chris Larkin, “Prejudiced People Perceive More Community Support for Their Views: The Role of Own, Media,
and Peer Attitudes in Perceived Consensus,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 40, no. 3 (2010): 710–731.
75
Aronson, Social Animal.
76
To quote Carlsson and Johansson-Stenman, most people “are willing to spend substantial amounts of money to avoid ambiguous
processes in favor of processes that are equivalent in terms of expected utility.” Carlsson and Johansson-Stenman, “Behavioral
Economics”.
77
Quoted in Matthew Nisbet, “Communicating Climate Change: Why Frames Matter for Public Engagement,” Environment
Magazine, March–April (2009), http://www.environmentmagazine.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/March-April%202009/Nisbetfull.html.
78
New Public Health, “Matthew Nisbet Q&A: Framing Public Health Issues,” August 30, 2012, www.rwjf.org/en/blogs/new-publichealth/2012/09/matthew_nisbet_qa.html.
73
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Pulitzer-prize winning author E.O. Wilson has successfully applied the frame of morality and ethics
to build partnerships with religious leaders who believe climate change is an urgent challenge.
Attitudes toward nuclear power are likely to be different when nuclear power is presented as a path
toward energy independence than when nuclear power is framed as risky technology requiring
significant public oversight.79 Because people are typically loss averse, a powerful form of framing is to
emphasize loss over gain. In one experiment, researchers worked with a home energy audit company
to test the behavioral effect of alternative ways of framing the benefits of an energy efficiency
improvement. The auditors told one group of homeowners how much money they could save on
energy bills each year. A second group was given otherwise identical information, except homeowners
were told that without taking action they were losing money every day (“throwing money out the
window”). The homeowners in the latter group were more than twice as likely to engage in the energy
efficiency behavior.80
Message frames need to be carefully tailored, as there is no single “public” to influence: “On any
complex problem there are a variety of publics that share common identities, information sources and
different individuals or types of experts that they trust and look to for information.”81 The
sophisticated messenger’s task is first to understand how relevant “publics” are likely to filter
communications on a given topic. Matthew Nisbet has argued that additional research is needed
through in-depth interviews, focus groups, sophisticated surveys, and experiments to further explore,
identify, and test frames across audiences.82 Further discussion of the critical role of framing is
provided in this report’s climate change communication case example in Part Four.
At the Environmental Defense Fund’s 2012 Science Day conference, the topic was “Decoding
Human Behavior: How the Social Sciences Can Help Solve Environmental Problems.”83 Drew Westen,
professor of psychology at Emory University and author of The Political Brain, spoke about shaping
and activating voters’ neural networks of association. He asked the audience to remember three verbal
images: “the moon rose over the ocean,” “the glasses sat on the chair,” and “the pen is under the table.”
After a small digression, he asked the audience to say the first brand of laundry detergent that came to
mind. Almost everyone said Tide. The “ocean–moon” image activated an unconscious network of
immediate association with waves and tide. The phenomenon is known as “priming,” and studies have
shown that this heightened activation—whether through words, sights, or smells—can last as long as
a year. For example, in one experiment, subjects were asked to unscramble anagrams and then notify
the experimenter of the completed task. Some subjects were asked to unscramble words related to
rudeness (such as “intrude” or “disturb”), whereas others were given more neutral words. When the
participants went to notify the experimenter, they found him engaged in conversation. Those primed
with rude associations were much more likely to interrupt.84 The practical use of priming strategies
remains limited because researchers don’t yet have a rigorous understanding of which of the
thousands of primes encountered each day have significant effects on behavior and under what
conditions. The authors of the MINDSPACE report concluded that priming is perhaps the least
understood of the behavioral effects they explored, but it has significant implications for
communications and public policy.85
79
Nisbet, “Communicating Climate Change.”
Aronson, Social Animal.
81
New Public Health, “Matthew Nisbet Q&A.”
82
Nisbet, “Communicating Climate Change.”
83
Environmental Defense Fund 2012 Science Day, Decoding Human Behavior: How the Social Sciences Can Help Solve
Environmental Problems, Sentry Centers Midtown West, New York, October 3, 2012.
84
Aronson, Social Animal.
85
Dolan et al., MINDSPACE.
80
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Finally, consider contrast, primacy, and scarcity effects. For example, when prospective
homebuyers are searching for a home, real estate agents may first show them relatively undesirable
options within their budget and then a more desirable one at the top of their price range. The
expensive home is likely to be more attractive after the buyer has looked at the prior options than if it
had been seen first. In other words, the sequence of comparisons can affect perceptions and choice.
Or consider the following two sentences: “Steve is intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical,
stubborn, and envious,” or “Steve is envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, and intelligent.”
An early experiment asking people to rate Steve’s qualities provided evidence of the importance of
initial impressions: Steve is ranked more positively based on the first description than the second, a
primacy effect. Similarly, when people were asked to watch a test-taker answer 30 questions and then
rank the test-taker’s intelligence, test-takers who answered questions correctly early in the test and
then showed a decline in their accuracy were perceived as more intelligent than those who answered
initial questions incorrectly and then improved in accuracy, despite answering exactly the same
number of questions correctly.86
The credibility and value attached to information can also be affected by perceptions of its
availability—or “scarcity.” Just as products that are scarce or limited may be more desirable,
information that is perceived as difficult to acquire or exclusive tends to increase people’s interest and
increase the likelihood that they accept the information at face value. To test this theory, the owner of
a successful beef-importing company asked his sales staff to phone customers—buyers for
supermarkets and restaurants—and request a purchase in one of three ways: through (a) a standard
sales presentation; (b) the standard presentation plus information that beef supplies were likely to be
scarce in the near future; or (c) the standard presentation, the scarcity information, and a “tip” that the
scarcity information was not generally available and had come from exclusive company contacts.
Those who were told about impending scarcity of beef ordered twice as much as those who received
only the standard sales presentation, and those who were also told that they were receiving exclusive
information purchased six times as much.87
A-3. Messengers and “Liking”
People are more likely to cooperate with those whom they perceive as similar to themselves.
People also often take one positive attribute of a person and assume that the individual has other
positive characteristics as well; this effect, referred to as the “halo effect,” can complicate critical
decisions. A study in Pennsylvania of criminal trial verdicts found that handsome male defendants
received significantly lighter sentences than those considered unattractive.88 In an experiment in
North Carolina, a set of men received comments about themselves from someone who needed a favor
from them. Some got only positive comments, others only negative, and the rest a mix of the two. The
person who provided only praise was liked best, even though the men recognized that the flatterer
stood to gain from their positive view of him; further, the praise did not have to be accurate to work.89
This research is relevant to understanding the information “messenger.” In particular, some
people are more likely to act on information from someone perceived as an authority figure or expert.
86
Aronson, Social Animal.
Cialdini, Influence.
88
Ibid. In this study, researchers rated the physical attractiveness of 74 male defendants at the start of their criminal trials. Once
the trials were complete the researchers reviewed the court records for the results of each of these cases and found that those
rated as attractive were twice as likely to avoid jail as those rated as unattractive.
89
Ibid.
87
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One example involved hospital nurses in 22 different wards of three Midwestern hospitals who were
unaware that they were being observed. In this experiment, a researcher called each nurse, identified
himself or herself as a hospital physician, and gave identical directives to each nurse to administer a
dangerous dosage of a drug to a specific ward patient. This directive should have prompted caution on
the part of the nurses because (a) a prescription transmitted by phone was in violation of hospital
policy; (b) the medication was unauthorized; (c) the dosage was obviously excessive, as it was double
the “maximum daily dose;” and (d) the nurse had never met, seen, or talked with this “doctor.”
Nonetheless, 95 percent of the nurses obeyed, procured the ordered dosage, and headed toward the
patients’ rooms before being intercepted by the observer. While both doctors and nurses are supposed
to act as a check on the safety and accuracy of medical treatment, this experiment showed that a
symbol of authority—the title of “doctor”—could cause nurses to disconnect from their own
professional judgment.90 However, the question of who is an expert, and to what degree, is ambiguous
and subjective. Two broad groups of experts—scientists and government experts—trigger particularly
complex associations for many Americans, associations that complicate generalizations relating to the
influence of expert judgment on behavior. People sometimes discard advice given by those they
dislike, and these feelings can override traditional cues of authority.91 Those people who have come to
believe that scientists are elitist or that the government is too heavy-handed may, accordingly, be less
likely to listen to or believe messages they perceive as coming from these groups.
People are also much more likely to be open to messages from familiar peers (regarding smoking
and HIV testing, for example).92 In the context of environmentally significant behavior, this
phenomenon has led to increasing recognition of the importance of identifying community champions
(both individuals and institutions) and organizing opinion-leader interventions. According to some
public health researchers, “At the social-network level, there is an urgent need to identify and activate
popular opinion leaders within all strata of society, including the government and commercial sectors.
Personal influence, especially of community opinion leaders, is a powerful source of social change.”93
Consider an illustrative example. When US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) officials encouraged
farmers in western Pennsylvania to install stream bank fencing and several habitat improvement
measures, their efforts were more successful when they were able to identify leaders in the farming
community, engage in a learning process with these leaders who ultimately adopted these practices,
and then work through these leaders to expand the adoption of these practices more broadly in the
community.94
Given the critical role of the messenger, the authors of the MINDSPACE report assert that it is
important to “think more carefully about which messengers to mobilize, in which circumstances, and
whether they should focus mainly on the automatic [click, whirr] or reflective ways of thinking.”95
Again, on any given subject one must consider a variety of “publics.”
Findings on “liking” and messengers, paired with what is known about confirmation biases, have
significant implications both for the creation of networks (cultural, informational, and so on) and for
divisions between such networks that can lead to polarization. “Homophily” refers to the tendency for
90
Ibid.
Ibid.
92
Aronson, Social Animal.
93 E. Maibach, C. Roser-Renouf, and A. Leiserowitz, “Communication and Marketing as Climate Change–Intervention Assets: A
Public Health Perspective, American Journal of Preventive Medicine 35, no. 5 (2008): 498.
94
This experience was recounted to Lynn Scarlett during site visits to western Pennsylvania and interviews with public-sector
officials, local university researchers, and members of the farming community.
95
Dolan et al., MINDSPACE, 19.
91
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people to form a network with others who are similar to them and to rely on relatively simple cues to
determine who those people are.96 Demographic and behavioral similarities between “experts” and
non-experts can increase the effectiveness of working together, whereas dissimilarities can have the
opposite effect.97 Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling developed a segregation model that tested slight
preferences for homophily. He used a squared board to represent a city, with each square representing
a home or lot, and used pennies and dimes to represent two groups—black or white, boy or girl,
smoker or nonsmoker, and used “happiness rules” to guide the movement choices of each agent.
Schelling found that the “city” quickly evolved into a strongly segregated landscape if the rules
specified that colocation with “like types” was highly favored. However, Schelling also found that
initially integrated “communities” tipped into full segregation even if the agents’ happiness rules
indicated only a mild preference for having neighbors of their own type.98 Some sociologists posit that
the current polarization of US beliefs and attitudes about climate change may be due to many
seemingly small decisions based on homophily preferences.99
A-4. Reciprocation and Commitment
The rule of reciprocation is deeply ingrained. One type of reciprocation involves invoking mutual
concessions, which can be a powerful tool in any type of cooperation or negotiation. An example is to
make an initial request larger than one expects to achieve and then concede to a more reasonable
outcome, or to make a small concession that induces a larger concession on the other’s part. Cialdini
refers to this as the “rejection-then-retreat technique.”100 Professional negotiators often use this
approach, recognizing that it is important to ensure that the initial demand is not so extreme as to be
immediately dismissed.101 An illustrative study tested the behavioral effect of the two following
alternatives: the first asked individuals to volunteer for two hours each week in a community mental
health agency for at least two years and then retreated to a request that they commit to volunteer for
two hours at least once, whereas the second made only the smaller request. The rejection-then-retreat
tactic yielded a 76 percent commitment, whereas the smaller request yielded only a 29 percent
commitment. Furthermore, 85 percent of those in the first group actually followed through on their
commitment, whereas only 50 percent of those in the second group did so. This effect can be linked to
two positive byproducts of the act of concession: enhanced feelings of both responsibility for and
satisfaction with the agreement, which can serve as an inducement to fulfill an agreement and to
engage in further agreements in the future.102
Making commitments publicly, or even simply writing them down, can also enhance the likelihood
of follow-through. In one experiment, college students were asked to estimate the lengths of a set of
lines. One group wrote down their estimates, signed them, and turned them in; another group wrote
them down privately and then erased them; and a third group made mental estimates but did not
96
To quote Henry and Dietz: “Homophily may be explained in the context of trust networks by the tendency of individuals to
believe that similarity in terms of certain easily observed attributes, such as educational background, policy preferences, or
institutional affiliation signals similarity in terms of other difficult to observe attributes that are critical for the formation of a trust
relationship.” Adam Douglas Henry and Thomas Dietz, “Information, Networks, and the Complexity of Trust in Commons
Governance,” International Journal of the Commons, 5, no. 2 (2011): 202.
97
Dolan et al., MINDSPACE.
98
Thomas Schelling, “Dynamic Models of Segregation,” Journal of Mathematical Sociology 1 (1971): 143–186.
99
Henry and Dietz, “Information, Networks, and the Complexity of Trust.”
100
Cialdini, Influence, 38.
101
To quote Cialdini: “The truly gifted negotiator, then, is one whose initial position is exaggerated enough to allow for a series of
reciprocal concessions that will yield a desirable final offer from the opponent, yet is not so outlandish as to be seen as illegitimate
from the start.” Cialdini, Influence, 40.
102
Ibid.
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write them down. Those who had never written them down were least loyal to their choices and were
easily influenced by new information. Those who had merely written them down were significantly
more committed to their initial estimates and those who had publicly recorded their initial positions
refused to shift. Studies of voter mobilization have found that turnout increases if voters are asked to
sign or make a verbal pledge to vote, if this act is followed by a mailing or a call reminding them of
their pledge. Telling those who pledge to vote that someone may call postelection to follow-up (a
“threat” of direct social accountability) is also a significant motivator.103
Public recognition can also be a powerful incentive to commitment. Consider an experiment in
Iowa to convince homeowners to conserve energy. One set of homeowners was contacted with energy
efficiency tips and asked if they would try to save fuel, which they all agreed to do. Another set was
contacted with the same tips, asked to conserve, and told that their names would be publicized in the
newspaper as public-spirited, fuel-conserving citizens. After one month, the first set had achieved no
real savings, but the second set had made significant reductions. Even after researchers sent letters to
these homeowners saying that it was no longer possible to publicize their efforts, the second set
continued to conserve—and in fact actually conserved more than in the first period—15.5 percent as
opposed to 12.2 percent.104 An explanation for this surprising result is that the newspaper incentive
“had prevented the homeowners from fully owning their commitment to conservation. Of all the
reasons supporting the decision to try to save fuel … it was the only one preventing the homeowners
from thinking that they were conserving gas because they believed in it.”105 This experiment was
replicated in the summer with even more notable results: a 28 percent savings with the publicity and a
42 percent savings after the publicity had been withdrawn. The influence of these extrinsic versus
intrinsic motivations is discussed further in the next section.
Evidence also suggests that securing a relatively small commitment can subsequently make it
easier to achieve larger commitments. In one experiment, researchers asked homeowners to display a
three-inch square sign in their window that read, “Be a safe driver.” Two weeks later, a different
researcher asked homeowners in the same neighborhood to place a large, poorly lettered sign on their
lawns reading, “DRIVE CAREFULLY.” Although more than 80 percent of those who had not received
any prior request refused, 76 percent of those who had agreed to the prior small request agreed to
have the sign in their yards.106
A variation of this experiment was conducted with two unrelated commitments (a petition in
support of “keeping California beautiful” followed by a later request to install the same “DRIVE
CAREFULLY” sign), with similar results. The hypothesis is that a small act of public service can lead
people to a new civic-minded, self-image. Thus, when asked to make a larger commitment, they
complied “to be consistent with their newly formed self-images.”107
Research suggests that people like to think of themselves as self-consistent, and this desire to act
consistently means that a small initial change in behavior can lead to compliance with subsequent,
more consequential behaviors. An implication is that motivating small changes in behavior may be
more effective than getting people to consciously change their minds. In the words of Dolan and
colleagues: “Small and easy changes to behavior can lead to subsequent changes in behavior that may
103
Marguerite Rigoglioso, “The Psychology around Voter Turnout” Graduate School of Stanford Business, Center for Social
Innovation, April 17, 2012, http://csi.gsb.stanford.edu/getting-out-vote.
104
Cialdini, Influence.
105
Ibid., 102.
106
Ibid.
107 Ibid., 73.
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go largely unnoticed. This approach challenges the common belief that we should first seek to change
attitudes in order to change behavior.”108
A-5. Incentives and Interacting Motivations
The impact of providing incentives is not as straightforward as it may seem. It is important to
distinguish between moral or intrinsic motivations (an action or behavior seen as worthy in itself) and
extrinsic motivations (such as financial rewards or public recognition).109 A preschool provided an
unintended example of this trade-off. Because some parents were picking up their children late, school
officials decided to implement a fee if parents arrived past a certain time. This led to the unexpected
consequence of more parents actually arriving late. Prior to the fine, the majority of parents had an
intrinsic motivation to pick up their kids on time, but the extrinsic attempt to provide a check on
arriving late actually undermined that motivation, making parents feel that they had a right to pick up
their children late.110 One reason to draw the distinction is a hypothesis that extrinsic motivations
(such as policies to pay for environmentally desirable behaviors) may undermine intrinsic motivations
(such as altruism). In other words, policies to create extrinsic motivations might work, but they might
work less well than expected. Of particular concern are extrinsic motivations (again, payments are an
example) that cannot be made perpetually. Once the extrinsic motivation is withdrawn, will intrinsic
motivations return, or are they lost? Numerous studies find that “if an individual has a preference for a
self-image as a morally responsible person, economic incentives may undermine moral motivation.”111
On the other hand, extrinsic environmental incentives can reinforce or “crowd in” intrinsic
motivations in a number of ways. At any one time, a variety of motivations are likely to be in play, and
motivations can interact in important ways. Consider an environmental tax that creates a financial
motivation for an environmental behavior. The pure financial motivation may trigger or amplify
additional motivational effects. For example, the tax may make it (relatively) cheaper to choose a
green alternative, and thus lower the psychic and other costs of adopting a green self-image. Or the
tax, by socially acknowledging the related environmental issue, may reduce ambiguity and cognitive
dissonance arising from doubts about the environmental issue’s validity. Or the tax, by altering the
larger community’s behavior, may also change the individual’s sense of norms and affiliation.112
Purchasers of hybrid vehicles, for example, are likely to do so for a variety of reasons, including tax
incentives, self-image, and affiliation with community norms.113 The decision of cities such as
Washington, DC, to implement disposable bag taxes provides another illustrative example. A more
subtle influence than the added 5¢ cost is the fact that no one automatically gets bags anymore: one
must request them in front of fellow customers. Washington, DC, implemented its bag tax in 2010;
within just two quarters the use of disposable bags had declined by roughly 80 percent, from 68
million to 12 million, and volunteers for the annual Potomac River Watershed Cleanup pulled 66
percent fewer plastic bags from the river than in 2009.114 These examples point to the need for more
108
Dolan et al., MINDSPACE, 28.
For an opposing view, see T. Brennan, “A Methodological Assessment of Multiple Utility Frameworks,” Economics and Philosophy 5, no. 2 (1989): 189–208; and T. Brennan, “The Futility of Multiple Utility,” Economics and Philosophy 9, no. 1 (1993): 155–164.
110
Carlsson and Johansson-Stenman, “Behavioral Economics.”
111 Ibid., 83.
112
Ibid.
113
Sexton, Steven and Alison Sexton. “Conspicuous conservation: the Prius effect and willingness to pay for environmental bona
fides.” Working paper, University of California, Berkeley (2011). This study showed that the willingness to pay for the “green halo”
of driving a Toyota Prius, even given a tax incentive, varied significantly based on the environmental friendliness of one’s neighbors.
114
Stephanie Simon, “The Secret to Turning Consumers Green,” The Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2010.
109
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study of interactions between incentives, particularly because a given incentive may compete with or
amplify other motivations.115
Given interacting motivations, incentives alone may not lead to widespread adoption of desired
behavior. Michael Vandenbergh and his colleagues examined the potential of the “behavioral wedge”
to contribute to domestic carbon mitigation and outlined six program design principles: (a) prioritize
high-impact actions (both technical potential and behavioral plasticity); (b) provide sufficient financial
incentives; (c) market the program effectively; (d) provide credible information at points of decision;
(e) keep it simple; and (f) provide quality assurance.116 The authors emphasize the increased
effectiveness of programs designed to implement all of these principles rather than just one or a few.
As with all of the potential tools for inducing environmentally significant behavior, providing
incentives appears not to be a silver bullet. The authors used these principles to assess a number of
programs that have already been deployed such as “cash for clunkers,” energy efficiency tax credits,
financial incentives for residential solar, and the Obama administration’s “Recovery through Retrofit”
proposals. Each program, shown in Table 1, provides incentives, but often their design overlooked
other important principles. Although the “cash for clunkers” program was well implemented,
particularly in terms of marketing and convenience, it wasn’t very effective from the standpoint of
environmental impact: that is, the cars purchased using the rebate were only marginally more fuel
efficient than those purchased prior to the rebate.117 For energy efficiency retrofits, it is difficult to
determine how much energy and money can be saved, getting the credit requires paperwork, and it
can take up to a year to get the return. Similarly, securing tax credits for residential solar energy is
quite complex. Some of the areas with the highest uptake have had neighbors or community members
join together to help each other take advantage of the incentives, including the identification of an
“environmental expert.” These findings, including the need to design and evaluate programs that use
all six principles, are not applicable only to individual or family decisionmaking. Vandenbergh and his
colleagues note, “The estimated potential for economically advantageous improvements in energy
efficiency in the private sector—the so-called energy efficiency gap—is not much smaller in the
private sector than among households.”118 The business sector also has significant untapped potential
for implementation gains.
115
Dolan et al., MINDSPACE.
Vandenbergh et al., “Implementing the Behavioral Wedge.”
117
Shanjun Li, Joshua Linn, and Elisheba Spiller, “Evaluating ‘Cash-for-Clunkers’: Program Effects on Auto Sales and the
Environment,” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 65, no. 2 (2013): 175–193.
118
Vandenbergh et al., “Implementing the Behavioral Wedge,”10552.
116
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Table 1. Recent Emissions Reduction Programs Rated by Design Principles
Note: PV, photovoltaics (for the generation of solar energy).
Source: Vandenbergh et al., “Implementing the Behavioral
Wedge.”
A-6. Defaults
“Defaults” are the fallback options that are preselected if an individual does not make an active
choice. The default versus active choice approach can have a significant effect on individual choices.119
One of the most common examples involves organ donations: a shift from having the option to “opt in”
to having to “opt out” has significantly increased participation in donor programs.120 Similarly, “green”
defaults significantly affect the choice of green electricity options.121 In an effort to raise more money
to maintain public parks in Washington State, decisionmakers decided to shift models. Instead of
asking drivers who were renewing their licenses to make a $5 donation, the donation was
automatically added to the cost unless applicants opted out of paying the fee. The previous model had
less than 2 percent participation and raised just over $600,000 a year, whereas the new model
generated returns of over $1 million in a single month.122
On the other hand, the more experienced an individual is with any given issue, the more likely that
person is to make an active decision. Lofgren and colleagues did an experiment testing the choices of
environmental economists registering online for a conference with the option to purchase carbon
offsets.123 The registrants were randomly offered one of three settings—opt in for offsets, opt out to
forgo offsets, or the offset option was noted without a default. In this case, providing a default had no
significant effect on the decision to offset, indicating that most registrants, presumably experienced
travelers with a firm understanding of offsets, made an active decision.
All of these findings on default effects have implications for environmental policy. First, “economic
incentives/regulation may have to be stronger if there are strong default effects on the market and
119
For a critique of the view that default choices are arbitrary for this reason, see note 173, below, and the accompanying text.
Dolan et al., MINDSPACE.
121
Daniel Pichert and Konstantinos Katsikopoulosa, “Green Defaults: Information Presentation and Pro-environmental Behavior,”
Journal of Environmental Psychology 28 (2008): 63–73.
122
Dolan et al. MINDSPACE.
123
A. Lofgren, P. Martinsson, M. Hennlock, and T. Sterner, “Are Experienced People Affected by a Pre-set Default Option? Results
from a Field Experiment,” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 63, no. 1 (2012): 66–72.
120
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defaults are not environmentally friendly.”124 Second, defaults are clearly a valuable tool
decisionmakers can use to motivate “passive” environmentally significant choices, particularly if the
actor is not very experienced or familiar with the issue. On the other hand, manipulating defaults in
this way substitutes the judgment of decisionmakers (regarding what is the “right thing to do”) for
that of markets and individuals.
B. Social Norms and Conformity
Social norms are a frequent and influential mental “shortcut” people use to make choices and
assess their own behaviors.125 Despite the large body of evidence on the power of social norms to
positively (or negatively) influence behavior, this evidence is under-recognized and underutilized by
those interested in changing behaviors. Robert Cialdini, a frequently cited social psychologist who
studies influence and persuasion, emphasizes that: “People frequently ignore or severely
underestimate the extent to which their actions in a situation are determined by the similar actions of
others [as well as] the persuasive impact that descriptive norms can have on the choices of a target
audience.”126
Many studies distinguish between two broad types of norms: descriptive and injunctive.
Descriptive norms refer to “perceptions of what is commonly done in a given situation” (e.g., everyone
on my block fills up their blue recycling bins, so I should recycle, too). Injunctive norms refer to
“perceptions of what is commonly approved or disapproved within the culture” (e.g., being an energy
saver is good and being an energy guzzler is bad).127 Evidence suggests that presenting aligned
descriptive and injunctive norms can motivate larger behavioral changes than applying them
separately.128 Although many studies demonstrate the behavioral influence of social norms on
individuals or households, social norms also influence group behavior and community, organization,
and business actions.
124
Carlsson and Johansson-Stenman, “Behavioral Economics,” 86.
Robert Cialdini, “Descriptive Social Norms as Underappreciated Sources of Social Control, Psychometrika 72, no. 2 (2007): 263–
268; and V. Griskevicius, R. Cialdini, and N. Goldstein, “Social Norms: An Underestimated and Underemployed Lever for Managing
Climate Change,” International Journal for Sustainability Communication 3 (2008): 5–13.
126
Cialdini, “Descriptive Social Norms,” 264–265.
127
P. Schultz, J. Nolan, R. Cialdini, N. Goldstein, and V. Griskevicius, “The Constructive, Destructive, and Reconstructive Power of
Social Norms,” Psychological Science 18 (2007): 429–434.
128 Ibid.
125
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An Example: New Information Leads to New Norms
In the late 1980s, Dutch graduate student Jan Hanhart came up with a novel idea. The
Dutch government was planning to devote significant resources to reducing nationwide
natural gas consumption by 15 percent. Hanhart proposed that the government simply
tell people what amount they were currently using, what amount they wanted them to
use, and provide them with some suggestions regarding how they might go about
reaching this national goal. The officials scoffed at the simplicity of his proposal, but he
persisted.
Hanhart put an advertisement on the front page of a local weekly newspaper telling the
community how much natural gas they were using and how much they should try to
conserve, along with some ideas and suggestions for reducing their use. Soon, he noted
that the community was engaged in an ongoing dialogue. Everywhere he went people
were asking their neighbors how much they were using and what they were doing to use
less. Within just six months, natural gas use had decreased by 18 percent, surpassing the
goal. This success appeared to be linked both to energy feedback (providing consistent
“real-time” information on energy usage) and to community dialogue that generated a
perception that conservation was the new norm.
B-1. Use of Norms
Social norms have a particularly strong impact under conditions of uncertainty or when people
have limited personal experience: “In general, when we are unsure of ourselves, when the situation is
unclear or ambiguous … we are most likely to look to and accept the actions of others as correct.”129
This response has been linked to negative behaviors, such as a crowd’s failure to respond to a crime
victim or other hazard.130 But norms can also be harnessed by policymakers and businesses in positive
ways. For example, when new environmental opportunities arise—such as when a new “green”
technology goes on the market or a new environmental regulation is put into place—“the unfamiliar
conditions will make people especially attentive and responsive to information about how others are
dealing with it. It also means a loss of persuasive leverage if leaders don’t use such information in their
communications.”131
As discussed earlier, similarity (even if superficial) affects perceptions of affiliation and the
likelihood that people will follow another’s lead, which is one explanation for why social norm–based
campaigns tend to be highly effective at the community level.132
A cross-cultural study of frequent drinkers in the United States, Germany, Mexico, and Japan
presented participants with comparisons between their alcohol consumption and the social norms in
their countries. Participants in Mexico and Japan, which are perceived as more community oriented,
acknowledged that information about norms influenced their behavior, whereas those in the United
States and Germany, which are seen as more individualistic, claimed that knowledge of peer behavior
had not influenced them. Nevertheless, in all four countries, participants reduced their drinking
relative to the control groups.133
129
Cialdini, Influence, 129.
Ibid.
131
Griskevicius et al., “Social Norms,” 11.
132
Cialdini, Influence.
133
Simon, “Turning Consumers Green.”
130
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Although people generally want to see themselves as responsible, they are also concerned about
relative status. Olof Johansson-Stenman and Peter Martinsson asked people to share the
characteristics they considered important when choosing a new car. Almost everyone claimed that
environmental characteristics were very important, whereas few emphasized the status associated
with specific makes and models. On the other hand, when asked to list what they saw as important
purchasing factors for others, status became more important and environmental performance less
important.134
People are more likely to invest their money, time, or other forms of influence on social and
environmental goods if people who are similar or “close” to them have invested their own capital
and/or if they will see or hear about one another’s choices. Numerous experimental studies have
shown that conformity is an important factor affecting people’s charitable giving in contexts ranging
from national parks to public radio fundraising and contributions to public goods.135
Reinforce Positive Norms, Not What’s Wrong with Negative Norms
The famous 1970s “Keep America Beautiful” ad campaign featured a sorrowful
Native American in a canoe rowing through trash in the water, past industrial pollution,
and watching someone toss garbage from a car window. What may have stuck in people’s
minds—in addition to the weeping protagonist—was that many people litter. This
reinforcement of a negative norm may have been counterproductive, as subsequent
research has shown.
Based on this hypothesis, researchers designed a set of three public service
announcements (PSAs) to encourage recycling based on reinforcement of a positive
norm. Specifically, the PSAs showed neighbors engaged in recycling and disparaging a
single neighbor who wasn’t participating; these PSAs were aired on local stations in four
Arizona communities. The researchers documented a 25 percent increase in recycling in
communities receiving the PSA relative to communities that did not. Social norms
information “should both validate and stimulate the desired action.”
B-2. Perceived versus Actual Norms
Researchers often find a significant divergence between the actual social norm and the perceived
norm. Social psychologists refer to this as “pluralistic ignorance”—a schism between the actual
prevalence of a belief in a society and what people in that society think others believe.136 Addressing
this divergence can be critical in motivating desired behaviors.137 At the Environmental Defense
Fund’s 2012 Science Day conference,138 Wesley Perkins, professor of sociology at Hobart and Williams
Smith Colleges, spoke about his research on social norms and behavior, much of which has focused on
reducing substance abuse and other negative behaviors, but has implications for environmental choice
behavior. Perkins argues that perceived peer norms are “the largest driver of behavior.” When
studying alcohol use and abuse on college campuses, Perkins found that the majority of youths
134
Olaf Johansson-Stenman and Peter Martinsson, “Honestly, Why Are You Driving a BMW?” Journal of Economic Behavior and
Organization 60 (2006): 129–146.
135
Carlsson and Johansson-Stenman, “Behavioral Economics.”
136
Lewandowsky et al., “Misinformation and Its Correction.”
137
Wesley Perkins and David Craig, “Student-Athletes’ Misperceptions of Male and Female Peer Drinking Norms: A Multi-Site
Investigation of the ‘Reign of Error,’” Journal of College Student Development 53, no. 3 (2012): 367–382.
138
Environmental Defense Fund 2012 Science Day.
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consistently overestimated the level of drinking by peers and their acceptance of excessive drinking.
On a more general level, studies have shown that norms related to social problems are commonly
misperceived in the direction of overestimated norms, whereas “protective” behaviors are commonly
underestimated. On issues from bullying to drinking and driving, and from secondary school– and
college-age substance abuse to general promotion of healthy behaviors, Perkins and his colleagues
have shown that social norm–oriented marketing campaigns to correct misperceptions are often more
effective at shifting behaviors in the desired direction than direct efforts to change behaviors.139 In
cases where the perceived norm diverges significantly from the actual norm, and the actual norm is
more desirable, identifying and correcting the misperception can reduce the schism and induce the
desired shift toward the true norm. According to Perkins, campaigns to correct the misperception can
benefit from having a clear action item and implementing “high-dosage” communications, with
ongoing and intense social marketing.
B-3. Norm-Based Environmental Success Stories: Examples
Hotel Guests and Towel Reuse: In 2006, a set of psychologists and other researchers evaluated
common appeals used by hotels to try to persuade guests to reuse their towels.140 They found that the
messages most commonly used focused on basic environmental protection (“Help save the
environment”). Two other common appeals invoked guests’ sense of social responsibility to future
generations or informed them of potential energy savings to the hotel. They found that the
environmental appeals and the social responsibility appeal all motivated a similar degree of desired
behavior, averaging 30 percent, whereas the appeal based on reducing hotel energy expenses
generated less than 16 percent participation. The researchers then decided to test the effect of a
“reciprocal” norm message. The revised appeal stated: “We’re doing our part for the environment. Can
we count on you?” This reciprocation norm yielded a participation rate of 45.2 percent, significantly
more effective than the previous cards (30.7 percent).
The researchers then communicated the norm specific to each guests’ room. This final message
stated: “75 percent of the guests who stayed in this room (#xxx) participated in our new resource
savings program by using their towels more than once. You can join your fellow guests in this program
to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.” This produced an even higher
reuse rate of 49.3 percent. Although the rise in participation was not dramatic, the authors point out
that this message provided “a nearly costless 10 percent increase in savings.” Such findings and results
may be familiar to those within the environmental arena, but their application remains limited by
hotels and other businesses that could benefit from the proenvironmental behavior of consumers.
Household Energy Conservation: In 2007, San Diego area residents were the subjects of a study
evaluating the success of different messages to motivate household energy conservation. Each
household received a placard with one of four messages advocating home energy savings. Three of the
messages used typical appeals to reduce household energy usage: (a) “conservation will save the
environment,” (b) “conservation will save you money,” and (c) “conservation will preserve resources
for future generations.” The fourth message provided survey-based information indicating that it was
139
Wesley Perkins, David Craig, and Jessica Perkins, “Using Social Norms to Reduce Bullying: A Research Intervention in Five Middle
Schools,” Group Processes and Intergroup Relations 14, no. 5 (2011): 703–722; W. Perkins, J. Linkenbach, M. Lewis, and C.
Neighbors, “Effectiveness of Social Norms Media Marketing In Reducing Drinking and Driving: A Statewide Campaign,” Addictive
Behaviors 35 (2010): 866–874; and Wesley Perkins, ed., The Social Norms Approach to Preventing School and College Age Substance
Abuse: A Handbook for Educators, Counselors, and Clinicians (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003).
140 N. Goldstein, V. Griskevicius, and R. Cialdini, “Invoking Social Norms: A Social Psychology Perspective On Improving
Hotels’ Linen Reuse Programs,” Cornell Hospitality Quarterly 48, no. 2 (2007): 145–150.
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the neighborhood norm to attempt to conserve energy in the home.141 In addition, a control message
urged conservation but didn’t provide a reason. Meter readings revealed that the message about
community norms generated significantly higher energy savings than any of the other messages (10
percent more than the control group, whereas no other group exceeded 3 percent more than the
control group).
When the participants were interviewed after the study and asked to rank the reasons for energy
conservation in terms of personal motivators, the “comparison with others” motivation was
consistently ranked last. This result underscores the degree to which people may be unaware of the
influence norms have on their behaviors.142
Paul Hamilton, a senior vice president at the global energy firm Schneider Electric, posits, “I would bet
if you went into a residential neighborhood and put a red, green or yellow light on peoples’ mailboxes
to show who’s an energy hog and who’s not, people would start to change their behavior.”143
Although the much-discussed example of OPower doesn’t use the visibility approach, it has utilized
the link between neighborhood norms and energy conservation and implemented it at a much larger
scale with its Home Energy Reports. The company provides utility customers with a simple monthly
visual comparing their energy use with that of “efficient neighbors” and “all neighbors” and then rank
their standing as “Great” with two smiley faces (an injunctive norm intended to dissuade efficient
customers from increasing their energy use), “Good” with one smiley face, or “Below Average.”144 As of
July 2012, five years after launching operations, OPower’s reports were reaching more than 10 million
households and had shown savings of more than 1 billion kilowatt-hours of energy, which would be
enough to take Arlington County, Virginia, off the grid for a year.145
This example illustrates the challenges of tapping the full potential of social norms. OPower is
currently reaching just shy of 8 percent of American households. To reach the other 92 percent,
utilities have to be motivated to buy their service and share their customer information. The
pioneering utilities are driven by state Energy Portfolio Standards and other regulations that create
incentives for energy efficiency improvements, and broad-scale application may require new laws and
policies. This experience illustrates the need to think carefully about how to present and frame
information on household energy impacts and mitigation potential to decisionmakers.146 In addition,
although OPower’s energy savings are notable, the most frequently reported behavioral changes
involve small day-to-day actions like turning off lights and adjusting thermostats, “behaviors that most
consumers likely already knew could save them energy,”147 whereas the largest, most lasting gains in
energy efficiency involve upgrading household technologies. “The most promising targets for policies
intended to shape a more sustainable energy future are those that involve the adoption of more
efficient equipment rather than those that involve the use of equipment … policies directed at
adoption have to work only once, while policies directed at use have to work continuously.”148
Consistent with our earlier observations on the importance of combining multiple strategies,
motivating changes to household capital will require integrated treatments that combine social norm
Schultz et al., “Power of Social Norms”.
Cialdini, “Descriptive Social Norms.”
143
Simon, “Turning Consumers Green.”
144
Hunt Allcott, “Social Norms and Energy Conservation,” Journal of Public Economics 95, no. 9–10 (2011): 1082–1095.
145
Kevin Redmon, “How OPower’s Dan Yates Persuades People To Use Less Energy,” Washingtonian, July 12, 2012,
http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/how-opowers-dan-yates-persuades-people-to-use-less-energy/.
146
Vandenbergh et al., “Implementing the Behavioral Wedge.”
147
Allcott, “Social Norms and Energy Conservation,” 1088.
148
Dietz et al., “Reducing Carbon-Based Energy Consumption,” 81.
141
142
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feedback with financial incentives, saturation marketing, simplified processes, and the other proven
principles of program design.
An evaluation of programs to encourage home weatherization found that those that were designed
effectively were able to achieve a 90 percent participation rate, but those that were not well designed
achieved less than 10 percent uptake, even with the same financial incentives. One example is the
Hood River Conservation Project, in which the municipal utility hired a team of sociologists to design a
communications outreach strategy that ultimately relied on existing neighborhood and community
organizations to spread the word. Implementation support and sizable incentives, along with other
program features, led to major energy efficiency retrofits in almost 90 percent of homes.149 Why has
such a successful approach, implemented more than 30 years ago, not been widely replicated? One
possibility is that decisionmakers are not well informed about the mitigation potential in this sector
and their role in overcoming barriers.
Sustainable Forest Management—The Driftless Project: Recognizing the limited successes of
engaging private landowners in forestry conservation in the Driftless Area of southwest Wisconsin,
the American Forest Foundation and others collaborated to increase their engagement by using social
marketing tools to test the effectiveness of different approaches. Approximately 40 percent of the 2.1
million–acre area is privately owned forestland. The area’s forests and forest economy are threatened
by encroaching development, unsustainable logging practices, and diminution of water quality and
wildlife habitat. To improve forest health and sustain forestry opportunities, more than 15 state and
federal agencies and nonprofit organizations formed the Driftless Forest Network, a landscape-scale
collaborative effort with a goal of working with forest owners to undertake sustainable forest
management practices.150
Using a novel strategy to promote sustainable private forestry, project designers are trying to
address three questions:
1. Can they apply social marketing techniques to move interested woodland owners toward
greater forestry knowledge and ability to implement sustainable forestry practices?
2. Can they help develop a collaborative landowner assistance network?
3. Can their combined strategies effect landscape-scale changes in ecosystem services and
multifunctionality?151
The project, which is using a landowner segmentation approach based on primary uses of forest
parcels and other details, is testing different networking concepts to attract and sustain landowner
participation in stewardship efforts. To date, project managers have used direct mail to contact
landowners and tested “different combinations of messages, offers, and delivery methods to increase
landowner engagement.”152 Project managers made two different offers to landowners—a free
handbook versus the offer of a free forester consultation. They then paired these offers with two types
of messages, one focused on wildlife and the other on financial considerations. Project architects
strived to test whether participants responded differently, depending on the offer and message by
149
Ibid.
Jerry Greenberg, Alanna Koshollek, and Mark Rickenbach, “The Driftless Forest Network (WI, USA): Innovation, Complexity, and
Evaluation in a Regional Landowner Engagement Initiative” (submitted to the IUFRO 2012 Small-Scale Forestry Conference: Science
for Solutions, September 24–27, 2012, Amherst, MA).
151
Ibid.
152
Ibid., 5.
150
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segment.153 The offers of free consulting services, referred to as Woodland Advocates, represented a
peer-to-peer educational approach inspired by research suggesting that such peer-to-peer education
enhances learning.
Though this experiment and its results are works in progress, project architects report increased
frequency of interactions among network members, which they interpret as suggesting that network
interactions “may be fostering improved landowner engagement.”154 Although full results of the
different outreach and messaging approaches have not been assessed, initial findings from four tests
of 8,000 landowners resulted in a 12.5 percent response rate. Of the respondents, 90 percent had not
had any prior engagement in sustainable forestry practices.
C. Risk Perceptions—Experts and Public Attitudes
Risk perception can affect people’s behavior. In studying people’s perceptions of risk, some social
scientists and psychologists have found that people view hazards with which they have little personal
experience as highly risky and are particularly fearful of such hazards.155 For example, many people
are particularly concerned about technologies such as nuclear power, about which they have little
personal knowledge, and they perceive the risks associated with nuclear power as much greater than
expert assessments of such risks.156
Conservation education programs often have the objective of enhancing understanding of risks
and changing conservation behavior. The implied premise is that providing individuals with
scientifically credible information, vetted by acknowledged experts, will help people better
understand the consequences of their current choices and the benefits and costs of other choices they
might make. In turn, it is hoped, this changed understanding will motivate voluntary changes in
behavior.
However, much of the published literature finds that education programs have only limited
influence on environmental choices and behavior.157 As described in the social psychology discussion,
individuals use two mental systems to receive, interpret, and then act on information—cognitive and
affective. Affective thinking, sometimes referred to as System 1 thinking, is characterized by “intuitive”
choice-making that employs decision heuristics, or mental shortcuts.158 Individuals also have the
capacity to employ cognitive, or System 2 thinking, akin to the way experts might think about a
situation, in “objective” scientific and technical terms. Both types of thinking are relevant to strategies
involving risk perception.
Consider, as an illustrative example, information and education about flood risks designed to
change development patterns in a river’s floodplain. A flood risk information program might presume
that individuals will employ cognitive (System 2) thinking in making floodplain location and use
decisions. If so, the objective of the program would be to convey to people (a) information that reflects
the scientific and technical facts and (b) more “expert” ways of thinking related to, for example, ways
to interpret probabilities and risk.
153
Ibid.
Ibid., 6.
155
A. Leiserowitz, “Climate Change Risk Perceptions and Policy Preferences: The Role of Affect, Imagery, and Values,” Climate
Change 77 (2006): 45–72.
156
Paul Slovic, The Perception of Risk (London: Earthscan, 2000).
157
“The Environmental Motivation Project,” accessed June 23, 2013, http://environmentalmotivation.com/references/.
158
Daniel Khaneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: MacMillan, 2011).
154
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System 2 thinking, in other words, could be fostered by engaging individuals (perhaps a group of
influential community leaders) in a stakeholder process. With give-and-take among citizens and risk
assessment experts, and sufficient time, technical education and System 2 thinking could be improved.
Indeed, System 2 thinking might yield a more complete and permanent understanding of the
phenomena of interest—in this example, flood risks. The collaborative processes described elsewhere
in this report might be employed toward this end.
However, expecting people to commit to such a learning process may be unrealistic, in part
because it requires significant investments in time and energy. For many people, flood risks may not
be worth thinking about in a System 2 manner. If this is the case, people will tend to employ more
heuristic (System 1–type) thinking. Consider an example of a heuristic policy strategy. The availability
heuristic suggests that flood risk information programs should persistently remind people of past
flood events to motivate risk reduction measures or the purchase of flood insurance. Also, the period
immediately following a flood is a particularly good time to promote learning about flood risks.159
It bears repeating that flood risk information programs, like any other behavioral intervention,
will interact with an existing and perhaps complex choice setting that includes financial constraints,
perceptions of the benefits and costs of alternatives, attitudes toward risk taking, and other factors.
Even if all individuals assess flood risks “like the experts,” one should expect different behavioral
responses because individuals will continue to differ along other informational and psychological
dimensions. Thus, the design of risk information programs requires an understanding of how to help
recipients acquire new information and how new information will interact with other motivations and
beliefs to affect their choices.
Risk information can also be employed by policies designed to “nudge” communities, landowners,
households, and businesses toward particular decisions;160 for example, to purchase flood insurance
or to implement community building codes and zoning restrictions in flood-prone areas. Nudges work
around, or take advantage of, heuristic strategies and biases. In these cases, whether or not a risk is
actually understood in “correct” objective, scientific, and technical terms is of secondary concern.
What matters is the impact of risk information on the choice architecture and subsequent behavior.
Accordingly, risk education can be thought of both as a way to correct heuristic biases that lead to
socially or individually harmful behavior or as a way for governments and other organizations to
manipulate behavior.
D. Economics and Individual Behavior
Economics—like psychology, sociology, and the other disciplines referenced in earlier sections—
concerns itself with preferences, choices, and behavior. Preferences, often expressed in terms of how
much people are willing to pay for something, provide the standard used by economists to evaluate
the benefits and costs of market outcomes and public policies.161 In contrast to psychology and
sociology, however, economics tends to take people’s preferences as given, rather than exploring the
source of those preferences or ways to manipulate them (though that statement is an
159
Aronson, Social Animal.
Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New York: Penguin Books,
2009).
161
If preferences can be changed as a result of public policies, attempting to use benefit–cost analysis creates numerous paradoxes
based on whether one should use pre- or postchange preferences and who gets to decide how preferences should be changed. T.
Brennan, “Green Preferences as Regulatory Policy Instrument,” Ecological Economics 56 (2006): 144–154.
160
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overgeneralization).162 A corollary is that economics tends not to focus on the question of whether
people’s preferences are “correct.” Nevertheless, even when economists treat preferences as given, the
way in which those preferences translate into choices and other behavior is of fundamental concern.
Neoclassical economics, the last century’s dominant paradigm, tends to assume self-interest and
rationality on the part of individuals, businesses, and other institutions. Economists are aware that
people are not always self-interested and rational, but consider self-interest a good baseline
assumption regarding people’s motivations, and rationality a reasonably good predictor of behavior.
Moreover, as extensively discussed above, behavioral economics is increasingly confronting the
messier truths about human behavior, including our psychological biases and departures from
rationality and self-interest.
D-1. Economic Perspectives on Choice: Prices and Income
Economists focus on two core factors that influence people’s choices. The first is prices, usually
treated in monetary terms but also potentially manifested along time, quality of life, or other
nonmonetary dimensions. A fundamental truism from Economics 101 is that raising the price of
something leads buyers to buy less and suppliers to supply more. If it becomes less expensive or more
rewarding to undertake activities that degrade the environment, economics predicts an increase in
that behavior. For example, this would explain—in part—why subdivisions and associated land
development exploded in the twentieth century as cars became less expensive. Of course, price
changes can also reduce environmental impacts. For example, many studies show that higher water
prices lead to water conservation and do so at lower economic cost than other kinds of conservation
policies.163 The theory and evidence that relate prices to behavior change lie at the core of most formal
environmental policies, including carbon taxes and other pollution taxes and fees, cap-and-trade
policies, liability laws, and subsidies for technology adoption.
A second main determinant of choices is income. Oversimplifying considerably, average income is
determined by trends in labor productivity and the presence or absence of macroeconomic
downturns. Changes in income do not always have clear implications for behavior. For example, when
incomes rise, demand for many goods will rise (houses, restaurant meals, vacations). Likewise, falling
incomes can lead to increased demand for certain goods, like fast food.164 For conservation outcomes,
rising incomes may increase the demand for activities that degrade the environment (driving,
homebuilding), but have also been shown to boost demand for conservation, clean air, and other
environmental protections.165
162
Because they are amenable to mathematical analysis, evolutionary models of preference determination using “survival of the
fittest” selection criteria to determine the relative success of people holding particular preferences have been employed. See, for
example, Eddie Dekel, Jeffrey C. Ely, and Okan Yilankaya, “Evolution of Preferences,” Review of Economic Studies 74 (2007): 685–
704.
163
Sheila Olmstead and Robert Stavins, “Comparing Price and Non-price Approaches to Urban Water Conservation” (Faculty
Research Working Papers Series, RWP08-034, Harvard Kennedy School, 2008), 4. See also R. A. Collinge, “Transferable Rate
Entitlements: The Overlooked Opportunity in Municipal Water Pricing,” Public Finance Quarterly 22, no. 21 (1994), 46–64; and see
K. Krause, J. M. Chermak, and D. S. Brookshire, “The Demand for Water: Consumer Response to Scarcity,” Journal of Regulatory
Economics 23, no. 2 (2003): 167–191.
164
A recent study found that purchases at WalMart increase when incomes are falling. Emek Basker, “Does Wal-Mart
Sell Inferior Goods?” Economic Inquiry 49 (2011): 973–981.
165
S. Kuznets, “Economic Growth and Income Inequality,” American Economic Review 45 (1955): 1–28.
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D-2. Insights from Behavioral Economics
In recent years, economists have devoted increasing attention to psychological and cognitive
factors or biases that affect choices. Behavioral economics seeks to integrate economic inquiry and
prescriptions with empirically realistic psychological phenomena, both in the laboratory and the real
world. Among these factors, also described in the discussion of social psychology, is framing—the idea
that choices may depend on how a set of options is presented, even if the actual options available are
the same regardless of the presentation.166 A second factor is loss aversion—the idea that people will
pay less to get something than they will pay to avoid losing it.167 Economists have long been aware, for
example, of a discrepancy between someone’s “willingness to pay” a cost for an environmental good
and their “willingness to accept” a reward for losing the environmental good. A third is salience—the
notion that people tend to exaggerate the relative importance of events and effects based on visibility
or immediacy.168
These factors may be particularly important in settings involving risk, which require an ability to
assign reasonable probabilities, make appropriate calculations of expected outcome, and adjust the
latter for aversion to risk—all of which may be difficult for persons to carry out accurately and
consistently. Along with these challenges, Cass Sunstein169 identifies a variety of cognitive biases
affecting risk assessment, most of which are related to salience in one way or another: (a) people think
a type of event is more likely if they can recall an example; (b) dangers may be more salient than
benefits; (c) people underappreciate indirect effects; and (d) people may display “alarmist bias,”170
which refers to risk assessments based on emotions rather than objective assessments of benefits and
costs.
A prominent recent contribution of behavioral economics to policy discussions is the concept of
policies that “nudge” behavior, briefly discussed earlier.171 These policies are economic in that they
pursue goals judged to be economically desirable. They are behavioral in that they take advantage of
psychological biases to trigger behavioral changes. As noted earlier, due to the framing effect, some
choices can be influenced by seemingly innocuous factors, such as default options and choice ordering.
This means that policy interventions can respond to, or actively take advantage of, that framing bias.
Consider the goal of getting people to adequately save for retirement—a goal considered by many to
be economically advantageous for individuals and society alike. New employees are much more likely
to obtain an employer-contribution pension plan if they have to “opt out” (e.g., by checking a box
saying they do not want it) than if they have to “opt in” (e.g., by not getting it unless they check a box
indicating their preference).172 Thaler and Sunstein have argued that this justifies what they call
“libertarian paternalism;” where it is paternalism because it requires participation in a pension plan to
166
A favorite example of this is a study finding that, holding characteristics of putts equal, professional golfers are more likely to
make a putt if it is to avoid a bogey than it is to get a birdie, even though the benefits of avoiding an extra stroke are identical.
Devin Pope and Maurice Schweitzer, “Is Tiger Woods Loss Averse? Persistent Bias in the Face of Experience, Competition, and High
Stakes,” American Economic Review 101 (2011): 129–157.
167
This is also known as the “endowment effect.” Jack L. Knetsch, “The Endowment Effect and Evidence of Nonreversible
Indifference Curves,” American Economic Review 79 (1989): 1277–1284.
168
George Akerlof, “Procrastination and Obedience,” American Economic Review 81 (1991): 1–19.
169
Cass Sunstein, “Cognition and Cost–Benefit Analysis,” Journal of Legal Studies 29 (2000): 1059–1103.
170
Ibid.
171
Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge.
172
John Beshears, James Choi, David Laibson, and Brigitte Madrian, “The Importance of Default Options for Retirement Saving
Outcomes: Evidence from the United States,” in Lessons from Pension Reform in the Americas, ed. Stephen J. Kay and Tapen
Sinha (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008): 59–87.
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be the default so more people save, but is libertarian because those who do not want salary deductions
for pensions can choose that outcome simply by checking a box.173 A criticism of such paternalism is
its presumption that policymakers (or “choice architects” in Thaler and Sunstein’s terminology) know
what is best for people. In fact, the original default (“opt out”) may reflect the alternative that is most
often preferred, especially as a result of the evolution of market processes over time.174
The empirical significance of these psychological biases and cognitive limitations remains a matter
of some controversy. For example, some studies suggest that as people repeatedly face a particular
choice setting, they learn and become less and less likely to make choices that reflect these biases.175
Others note, however, that environmental choices are typically not repeated, unlike many choices
involving market goods, like air tickets or groceries. When people do not make repeated purchases or
other choices, they do not have the same opportunity to learn from “the feedback and discipline of an
active exchange institution.”176
Nonetheless, loss aversion appears to be a demonstrable empirical reality and one with particular
relevance to conservation. In fact, it may explain a longstanding anomaly in the valuation of
environmental goods such as habitat conservation: namely, that the amount people are willing to pay
to gain protected habitat is less than the amount they must be paid to accept an identical loss in
habitat. Standard economic theory predicts that the two amounts should be the same.
Although most studies finding such a disparity are based on small-scale laboratory experiments,
some field studies have also found evidence of the effect. For example, Bishop and Heberlein found
that in a sample of Wisconsin hunters wanting deer permits, those who had obtained such permits
through a lottery required an average cash offer of $1,184 to accept the loss of a permit they already
owned, whereas those who had not been successful in the initial lottery were willing to pay, on
average, $23 for a permit they did not yet have.177 This discrepancy of a factor of 40 is difficult to
reconcile with standard economic models predicting little to no difference between how much one
would be willing to pay for something and how much one would need to be paid to give it up.
Part Two (I: A–D)—Social Psychology, Norms, Risk Perception, and Behavioral
Economics: Summary of Key Findings

“Motivated reasoners,” influenced by affect, may discount or ignore information that
challenges existing evaluations and expectations.

People use mental shortcuts, so decisions and actions are often shaped by context, biases, and
other subconscious responses.
173
R. Thaler and C. Sunstein, “Libertarian Paternalism,” American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 93 (2003): 175–179.
Robert Sugden, “Why Incoherent Preferences Do Not Justify Paternalism,” Constitutional Political Economy 19 (2008): 226–248.
Along these lines, one can note that default options are not randomly chosen. In many settings, people may reasonably belief that
the default is the choice that most people prefer, and thus decide that, absent other information, they should follow along. This
need not lead to an efficient outcome because earlier guesses can have undue influence on later decisions through “information
cascades.” David Easley and Jon Kleinberg, “Information Cascades” in Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning about a Highly
Connected World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010): 483–508.
175
John List, “Does Market Experience Eliminate Market Anomalies?” Quarterly Journal of Economics 118 (2003): 41–71; Tilman
Slembeck and Jean-Robert Tyran, “Do Institutions Promote Rationality? An Experimental Study of the Three-Door Anomaly,”
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 54 (2004): 337–350.
176
Jason Shogren and Laura Taylor, “On Behavioral–Environmental Economics,” Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 2
(2008): 37.
177
Richard Bishop and Thomas Heberlein, “Does Contingent Valuation Work?” in Valuing Environmental Goods: An Assessment of
the Contingent Valuation Method, ed. R. Cummings, D. Brookshire, and W. Schulze (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allenheld, 1987),
123–147.
174
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
The potential benefits of changing individual or household behavior are often underestimated.

It is unhelpful to create fear without agency.

People are more likely to cooperate with those they perceive as similar to themselves or that
are perceived as peers.

How a message or issue is framed can significantly affect responses.

Public recognition can provide a valuable incentive to action.

Securing even small behavioral commitments can set the stage for larger commitments.

It may be easier to stimulate changes in behavior than changes in attitudes.

The use of incentives is not straightforward because incentives interact with other
motivations, and their effectiveness can be influenced by how they are presented and the
clarity and ease of using the incentives.

Education programs have only a limited influence on environmental choice behavior.

Effective risk communication requires understanding how recipients assess information and
the context within which they make choices.

People have strong loss aversion, so framing issues in terms of losses can be more effective
than framing them in terms of gains.
II. Collective Settings for Conservation Actions—Businesses and Communities
The preceding overview focused on individual behavior and factors that affect individual
conservation choices and actions. In this section, we take a closer look at some specific decision
contexts and examples in the business sector and in community action. We examine how information,
social setting, and other factors affect incentives and choices; how market and policy rules, contracts,
and structures affect incentives that, in turn, influence choices in the marketplace; and how processes
of public engagement and collaboration affect choices and action.
A. Businesses and the Marketplace
Businesses are, of course, composed of individuals, play a significant stakeholder role in
community-scale processes, and can both shape and be moved by society-wide values and messages
relevant to conservation. Business behavior deserves its own examination, though, for several reasons.
First, business behavior has a huge impact on natural resource use and environmental quality. Second,
and a corollary to the first point, changes in business behavior present an opportunity for significant
conservation gains. We address both large and small business behavior in this section. But a focus on
the behavior of the world’s largest corporations could have a particularly large effect on conservation
outcomes. For example, 100 companies control a quarter of the world’s trade in the 15 most
significant resource commodities.178 Third, business behavior, again because of its importance, has
received a great deal of attention from the social sciences, both in terms of theories of behavior and
empirical examinations of what drives that behavior. Finally, individual businesses can be thought of
as communities unto themselves, where individual, group, and social behaviors come together to be
shaped and resolved.
178
Jason Clay, “How Big Brands Can Help Save Biodiversity” (TED talk, 2010),
http://www.ted.com/talks/jason_clay_how_big_brands_can_save_biodiversity.html.
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Not surprisingly, most theories of business behavior emphasize financial motivations. The baseline
assumption is that any business behavior, including those related to the environment, is motivated by
the search for profit for shareholders and other types of owners. Theories of business behavior tend to
differ primarily in terms of varying degrees of emphasis on the specific ways profitability is affected by
the social and economic environment.
A-1. The Foundational Theory: Profit Maximization and Externalities
A traditional, and now widely accepted, view is that businesses are not motivated to care about the
environmental costs they impose on others. Because “externalized” costs do not affect a firm’s
profitability, there is no business incentive to reduce them via environmental stewardship. The
corollary theory is that environmentally beneficial behavior can be motivated by the imposition of
those costs on firms. This theory was the conceptual basis for most environmental policy reforms in
the latter half of the last century. The internalization of externalities, its effect on profits, and
subsequent consequences for environmental behavior justify the imposition of environmental liability
and environmental taxes, fines, and other fees. Moreover, the basic incentive problem identified by
this theory—that businesses will not take externalized costs and benefits into account unless
motivated to do so by government—is also the justification for command-and-control regulations that
specifically mandate desirable, or prohibit undesirable, environmental practices.
The justification for subsidies—to financially reward environmentally preferred behavior—is
rooted in the same motivational theory. Some environmental business practices and products produce
social benefits that cannot be captured (internalized) by the firm. This provides an economic
justification for public subsidies in the form of tax breaks or direct payments designed to increase the
supply of these environmental benefits. Advocates of solar and wind energy production, for example,
justify subsidization of those technologies by pointing to reductions in air pollution.
The implications of this foundational theory for conservation interventions have, in more recent
decades, been more limited, at least in the developed world. In principle, conservationists could focus
their advocacy around new, reformed, or expanded government policies to internalize a broader suite
of environmental costs on businesses, to regulate or prohibit activities at odds with conservation
goals, or to subsidize desirable conservation behaviors. And indeed, a great deal of such advocacy is
currently underway (e.g., to strengthen air pollution regulations, regulate agricultural runoff, support
renewable energy sources, and designate more lands as wilderness). One could argue that many
business-related environmental costs relevant to conservation are not adequately internalized or
regulated.
However, the theory of change implied by the “profit maximization and externalities” perspective
is limited and somewhat unrealistic.
The foundational theory is limited because it focuses on government as the primary creator of
environmental business incentives. As we discuss below, profit-related environmental business
incentives take a much wider variety of forms, many unrelated to government policy per se. The
foundational theory also tends to focus on government policies that are explicitly targeted at
environmental issues and that can be described as coercive or mandatory. But many government
policies affect environmental business behavior more obliquely, either because they are voluntary in
nature or because environmental behavior is not their central focus.
The foundational theory is unrealistic because it oversimplifies the relationship between business,
government, and the public. The theory works cleanly as a theory of change only if one assumes that
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government acts only in the broad public interest, the public interest is clear and uncontroversial, and
government action is effective and itself uncontroversial. Conservation strategy in this naïve scenario
would take the form of demonstrating and communicating the existence of public environmental costs
or benefits associated with business activity, presenting that evidence to the government, and waiting
for a corrective policy response.
Those conditions were approximated in the United States during the advent of the modern
regulatory era (the 1960s and 1970s). The existence of public costs was more significant and apparent
(smog, water pollution, trash, urban blight). Faith in government institutions may have been stronger,
though the evidence on this is mixed.179 Consequently, the social consensus for large-scale, coercive
government intervention was relatively strong. Today, the social and political consensus for such
policy changes has weakened significantly.180
Also, businesses are not passive participants in these social deliberations. They can influence
government and play a role in shaping public attitudes and values. Their behavior can also be shaped
by public attitudes and a variety of nongovernmental pressures.
These qualifications are not meant to suggest that the classic model of market failures and
corrective environmental policies is not meaningful to business behavior and conservation strategy—
quite the contrary. Evidence that the classic model of regulation, liability, and tax and subsidy
incentives leads to environmental behavior change is vast and not worth recounting here.181 But a
much broader suite of business environmental motivations exists, and this, in turn, implies alternative
or additional points of leverage for conservation behavior change.
A-2. A Broader Understanding of Business Motivations
Businesses routinely engage in environmentally beneficial behaviors that are not motivated
directly by statutes or regulations. They engage in a variety of actions that go “beyond compliance”
and that can loosely be described as voluntary. But though voluntary, these actions usually should not
be considered altruistic. The motivation remains profit maximization; reduction of risk and liabilities
takes place because of their effect on the bottom line. Businesses can be strategic and sophisticated
when it comes to the richer social and political factors that affect their long-run profitability. This
section describes a range of factors that can lead businesses to go beyond their legal and regulatory
responsibilities.
A-2a. Consumer-Oriented Motivations: Most obviously, businesses sell their products to individual
consumers who may desire—and be willing to pay for—environmentally beneficial products and
services. In some cases, the products and services themselves may be less environmentally damaging
(e.g., biodegradable packaging or low-emissions vehicles). In other cases, the environmental benefit
may arise from the product’s broader ecological footprint, related to its production processes or
resource demands (e.g., shade grown coffee or energy-efficient appliances). Businesses may both
179
John R. Hibbing and E. Theiss, Congress as Public Enemy: Public Attitudes toward American Political Institutions (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1995).
180
The insights of Ronald Coase provide one window into this eroded consensus. Coase points out that externalities can be
corrected without government intervention, as long as property rights are clear and those bearing the costs can collectively
organize to pay polluters not to pollute. For this reason, his work is credited with energizing and providing intellectual support for
antiregulatory interests (an oversimplification of his insights). Nevertheless, the antiregulatory “property rights” and “takings”
movements use similar reasoning to challenge the presumption that regulation is the only way to address environmental harms.
181
For a recent summary and comparison of US regulation’s benefits and costs see Office of Management and Budget, Draft 2012
Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulations and Unfunded Mandates on State, Local, and Tribal Entities
(Washington, DC, 2012).
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passively follow consumer desires for environmental products and lead those desires—for example,
through branding and product differentiation—in a way that is competitively advantageous.
Consumer motives, therefore, are an important link between businesses’ profit motive and the
behavior, values, and psychology of individuals. We will not repeat here the Part One overview of
individual-scale behavior. However, the business community clearly understands the relevance of
consumer motivations and values to sales, brand loyalty, and profitability.
A canonical example of the interplay between individual values and business motives is the Toyota
Prius. The vehicle possesses many desirable attributes, including high fuel mileage. But the
motivations to own (and thus produce) them are more complex. According to one marketing study, 57
percent of owners cited as their main motivation for ownership that “it makes a statement about me,”
whereas 37 percent cited the car’s fuel economy.182 The “statements” made by the car have unclear
origins, but relate to environmentalism, celebrity endorsements, concern over energy security, and
political party affiliation.183 Although hybrid manufacturers no doubt took advantage of existing
environmental motivations, they also exploited those values for competitive advantage.184
The business management literature is increasingly looking at “micro-psychological” factors that
affect business–consumer relationships. An example is an exploration of business–consumer unity, or
“belongingness,” which is argued to be related to consumer loyalty, positive word of mouth, and
resilience to negative information about a company.185 Though inherently “soft” concepts, consumer
perceptions of firms’ social and environmental sustainability and the way those perceptions resonate
with consumer psychology influence consumer choices and behavior.186
A-2b. Consumer Information Problems and Solutions: As consumer desires are harnessed or
exploited, an important factor is the degree to which consumers can themselves assess a product’s
environmental features. If “green” features are fairly clear (such as phosphate-free laundry detergent),
companies can market those features directly to consumers. However, it is often difficult for
consumers to observe and verify a product’s or company’s environmental features, performance, or
footprint. For example, the environmental features of many products are associated with their
production, byproducts, recycling, or disposal rather than anything directly experienced by the
consumer. A consumer cannot identify shade-grown coffee or organic milk based on its look or taste.
And many consumer products involve vast supply chains where the environmental performance of a
given link is nearly impossible to observe. Information asymmetries like these can result in decisions
that create negative environmental impacts.187
This situation can lead to consumer skepticism and doubt about green marketing claims, which
reduces the price premium that a business can charge for environmentally beneficial products. In turn,
this means that businesses may not be able to recoup the costs of green products or profit sufficiently
to make their development worthwhile (from a business perspective). Evidence suggests that
182
The New York Times, “Say ‘Hybrid’ and Many People will Hear ‘Prius,’” July 4, 2007.
Robert J. Samuelson, “Prius Politics,” The Washington Post, A15, July 25, 2007.
184
A driver quoted in the New York Times article cited above (“Say ‘Hybrid’”), said she chose the Prius over other hybrids because “I
wanted to have the biggest impact that I could, and the Prius puts out a clearer message.”
185
C. B. Bhattacharya, Sankar Sen, and Daniel Korschun, Leveraging Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Route To Maximizing
Business and Social Value (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
186
Ibid.
187
Nicole Darnall and JoAnn Carmin, “Greener and Cleaner? The Signaling Accuracy of US Voluntary Environmental Programs,
Policy Sciences 38, no. 2–3 (2005): 71–90; and Jonathan Borck and Cary Coglianese, “Voluntary Environmental Programs: Assessing
Their Effectiveness,” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 34 (2009): 305–324.
183
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consumers routinely discount corporate environmental messages as “green-washing” or empty selfpromotion.188
In economic terminology, consumers’ inability to verify environmental features for themselves
creates a “lemons problem.”189 The lemons problem predicts that markets for certain products will not
exist when consumers are uncertain about a product’s quality. The classic example involves used cars
whose underlying quality is difficult for buyers to observe on their own. Lacking precise information,
rational consumers will purchase cars based on their understanding of a used car’s average quality.
This means that those selling cars of above-average quality cannot get the price they seek for their
high-quality cars, and will thus withhold them from the market. Buyers anticipate this, which leads
them to further reduce their expectations of average quality. In the end, some markets may provide
only the lowest-quality products because of this information asymmetry between buyers and sellers.
In terms of environmental claims, consumers are often rightfully skeptical of their credibility.190
The public, environmentalists, and businesses have a collective interest in addressing this market
failure. Labeling and certification programs (e.g., shade grown or organic), if properly executed,
provide consumers with an independent, and thus presumably credible, signal of the environmental
quality of a product, process, or company. If consumers can rely on this independent signal, their
willingness to pay a premium and the subsequent willingness to provide high quality by businesses
are restored.
Thus, to harness individual consumer motivations, it can be necessary to intervene via
information-based programs. These programs may be governmental or nongovernmental in nature.
The economic justification for government intervention as a response to information asymmetry is
well established.191 For example, market failure associated with information asymmetry is a key
motivation for truth-in-advertising laws enforced by the Federal Trade Commission and product
certification by the Food and Drug Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Although these programs are regulatory, they are not environmental regulatory programs. They
encourage beyond-compliance environmental behavior by strengthening the credibility of information
used by profit-seeking businesses to reach environmentally motivated consumers.
A variety of voluntary information-related programs are closely linked to environmental
performance. Consumers can rely on a range of green signals provided by government certification
programs (e.g., Energy Star, recycled content, and fuel efficiency ratings). Programs supported by
EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery provide another example and include programs
such as EPA’s WasteWise achievement and awards program and participation in the National
Partnership for Environmental Priorities. In general, these programs operate as partnerships between
government and businesses. In exchange for salutary environmental behavior, businesses are able to
brand themselves as environmentally advanced, using the government program and its imprimatur as
evidence.
Studies suggest that the firms most likely to participate in voluntary programs tend to be larger,
those that produce final consumer goods (where public values are likely to be most influential), and
188
Bhattacharya et al., Leveraging Corporate Responsibility.
George Akerlof, “The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics
84, no. 3 (1970): 488–500.
190
See a 2007 study that found misleading environmental claims in all but one of a sample of 1,000 products sold by big-box stores.
TerraChoice Environmental Marketing, “The ‘Six Sins of Greenwashing:’ A Study of Environmental Claims in North American
Consumer Markets” (2007).
191
See N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Economics (Cincinnati, OH: South-Western College, 2008), 485.
189
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those that are exposed to other forms of nongovernmental organization (NGO) and public pressure.192
Evidence also suggests that the environmental benefits of such voluntary programs are limited.193
In some cases, the private sector establishes its own certification and standards programs,
primarily to deal with supply chain information issues. An example is the American National
Standards Institute that, via the International Organization for Standardization, developed the ISO
14000 environmental certification program. The American Chemistry Council’s Responsible Care
program certifies facilities based on compliance with a set of best environmental and safety practices.
Another example is the Underwriters Laboratories, which tests and rates product and environmental
safety, primarily for the benefit of the private sector. The Forest Stewardship Council, which certifies
sustainable forest products, is another example. Web-based applications are also being created by
independent firms to provide consumers with easily accessible product ratings (e.g., GoodGuide.com).
Certification and Social Marketing
What is the relationship between eco-certification and social marketing? Social
marketing involves the use of marketing techniques (e.g., advertisement, messaging, and
branding) to achieve a broad social health, safety, or welfare goal. Commonly cited
examples are pro-seatbelt, antismoking, and antilitter public education campaigns.
Similarly, certification programs improve firms’ ability to market environmental features
and achievements in a way that is good for social welfare.
The two approaches are linked, but distinct. First, whereas social marketing is broadly
defined as mass media messages targeting the general public (e.g., don’t smoke),
certification programs target specific subgroups of producers and consumers. Second,
behavior change arising from certification programs is driven in large part by their
ability to provide firms with tools to differentiate themselves for their own competitive
advantage. Third, social marketing emphasizes long-term, lasting behavior change driven
by a change in underlying social values. Certification programs are designed to take
advantage of those underlying values, allowing consumers to make purchasing decisions
based on values they already hold.
A-3. Nonprofit Organizations and Environmental Branding
Partnerships between environmental NGOs and businesses are increasingly common. Examples
include the Sierra Club’s endorsement of Clorox’ Green Works products (biodegradable cleaners), the
National Audubon Society’s partnership with Monsanto to develop habitat protection plans near the
company’s facilities, the Wildlife Conservation Society’s certification of forestry products of Congolaise
Industrielle des Bois, the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF’s) collaborations with Cargill and Coca-Cola on
agricultural and water issues, and the environmental assessments provided to BP by Conservation
International and The Nature Conservancy.194
The business community provides environmental groups with an important target for behavior
change and beyond-compliance impacts. NGOs can provide businesses with technical assistance due to
192
Borck and Coglianese, “Voluntary Environmental Programs.”
Richard D. Morgenstern and William A. Pizer, eds., Reality Check: The Nature and Performance of Voluntary Environmental
Programs in the United States, Europe, and Japan (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future [RFF] Press, 2007).
194
The Economist, “Reaching for a Longer Spoon: The Disaster in the Gulf of Mexico Is Straining Ties Between Companies and
Activists,” June 3, 2010; and “Clorox Expands Green Works Line, Gives $470K to Sierra Club”, GreenBiz.com, accessed August 1,
2013, http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2009/01/19/clorox-expands-green-works-line-gives-470k-sierra-club.
193
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their expertise with environmental analysis and planning. Several of the above examples (such as the
partnerships with BP) take this form. But another important element in play is that NGOs are
providing businesses with powerful branding tools. As noted earlier in this section, green businesses
often face a credibility problem due to consumer information constraints. NGOs, as perceived stewards
of the environment, can provide businesses with a powerful signal of environmental quality. In some
cases, a branding relationship can take a particularly direct form—as when Clorox placed the Sierra
Club’s logo on its Green Works products. But even without logo placements, the relationship itself is
invariably advertised in other ways, such as through advertising campaigns, websites, and annual
environmental reports.
NGO–business partnerships are controversial within the environmental community. In part, this
reflects the environmental community’s differences of opinion over political tactics; specifically,
whether it is better to “work with” or “work against” the business community (for example, the
Environmental Defense Fund and Greenpeace operate at different ends of this spectrum). But these
partnerships are also associated with a signaling issue. Critics note that when money changes hands
(as it did in some form for all of the examples listed above), this undermines the NGO’s independence
and thus its credibility as a certifier.195 The power of the brand signal, and thus its power to induce
consumers to pay more for green-branded products, is undermined by consumer perceptions that
NGOs are influenced by business dollars. It is difficult to say how important such perceptions are in
practice, though one recent study found that trust in government and environmental groups is an
important predictor of green consumption and use of environmental labels.196 But in principle, the
financial independence of certifying institutions affects their power to influence consumer behavior.197
195
See, for example, one reaction to the Sierra Club–Clorox partnership: “Green Washing,” Fast Company, accessed June 24, 2013,
http://www.fastcompany.com/1042484/green-washing.
196
Nicole Darnall, Cerys Ponting, and Diego Vazquez-Brust, “Why Consumers Buy Green,” in Green-Growth: Managing the
Transition to Sustainable Capitalism, ed. D. Vazquez-Brust and J. Sarkis (New York: Springer, 2012), 287–308.
197
Note that this is true of government institutions as well. Perceptions that governmental certifiers are captured or otherwise
influenced by business have the same undermining effect. See Rick Harbaugh, John W. Maxwell, and Beatrice Roussillon, “The
Groucho Effect of Uncertain Standards” (working paper, Kelley School of Business, 2006), http://ssrn.com/abstract=948538.
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Do Certification Programs Work?
Do certification programs work? This question has two parts. First, do consumers buy
certified products? And second, is that good for the environment?
The first question is easier to answer than the second. Ample evidence suggests that
consumers respond to environmental messages and branding in general (though green
branding is different from certification per se). Yet the evidence of a willingness to pay
more for green products is mixed. According to a 2012 poll by Ipsos, an independent
market research firm, roughly half of Americans are “more inclined to buy a product if it
is environmentally friendly” (which means that half of Americans are not), and 40
percent would be willing to pay “a little more” for such products. Only 3 percent say they
“always buy green products.” Moreover, these kinds of survey responses probably
overstate the willingness to pay for green features because they do not reflect real
purchasing decisions.
For eco-labels and certification programs more specifically, very few credible studies of
impacts have been conducted. A recent review identified a total of 46 peer-reviewed
studies of certification effectiveness—associated with coffee, fish, bananas, tourism, and
forest products certifications. Of these, only 11 employed statistical techniques
necessary to define a scientifically defensible counterfactual outcome, and only 2 of these
11 considered environmental outcomes. In both cases, certification’s environmental
effect was negligible. Evidence that certified producers can charge higher prices was also
weak. Even among somewhat less rigorous studies, evidence of environmental benefits is
decidedly mixed.
However, a more recent and rigorously constructed assessment (of shade-grown coffee
certification in Mexico) found that certification results in significant reductions in the use
of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and herbicides and increases the use of organic
fertilizer. An overall lesson is that the environmental effects of certification programs
remain largely unknown.
A-4. “Political” Motivations for Over-Compliance
A variety of other motivations for companies to over-comply with environmental standards have
been advanced. One strand of thinking emphasizes the interaction between profit motives and the
political process.198 Because politics can determine changes in law and regulation, businesses and
other stakeholders have an incentive to influence the political process. When theories of business
strategy are combined with insights into the political economy of laws, regulations, and influence, one
can think of a variety of reasons why firms might go beyond the letter of the law. Most of these insights
follow basic intuition: how a company behaves environmentally today can influence the behavior and
incentives of politicians, regulators, and stakeholders in the future.
For example, some firms or whole industries may position themselves as environmental leaders
(over-comply) to reduce the incentive of environmental interests to organize and lobby for tighter
regulatory standards.199 The idea is that lobbying by environmental interests is costly and advocacy
resources are limited. Accordingly, pressure groups may steer away from firms or industries
perceived to be self-regulating, over-compliant, or otherwise environmentally proactive.
198
Thomas Lyon and John Maxwell, “Corporate Social Responsibility and the Environment: A Theoretical Perspective,” Review of
Environmental Economics and Policy, 2, no. 2 (2008): 240–260.
199
John W. Maxwell, Thomas P. Lyon, and Steven C. Hackett, “Self-Regulation and Social Welfare: The Political Economy of
Corporate Environmentalism. Journal of Law and Economics 43, no. 2 (2000): 583–618.
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For similar reasons, firms may use proactive environmental behavior to steer government
monitoring and enforcement actions toward other firms and competitors and away from their own
activities.200 Because monitoring and enforcement resources are limited and regulators lack
compliance information prior to monitoring, they may target firms considered more likely to be
noncompliant. A firm’s environmental reputation may affect that targeting.
In addition, firms often require contentious local approvals, such as zoning permits, to site their
facilities. Corporate reputation can be important to the success or failure of these political
deliberations, as well;201 therefore, the need for local approvals provides an incentive for proactive
environmental behavior. This is also true in a developing world context, where engagement with
conservation organizations is considered by many a way to gain access and rights to strategic natural
resources.202 Environmental performance can also matter in competitions for government
procurement contracts that are, in part, politically determined.203
Some have suggested that – while counter-intuitive – firms may make proactive environmental
investments today to raise the costs of complying with future regulations (and thereby deter such
regulations).204 This rationale assumes that higher future costs will deter politicians and regulators
from imposing those future regulations.205
In another set of situations, firms may over-comply, as a condition of a regulatory permit, in
exchange for some compliance flexibility. For example, a small number of regulatory programs have
allowed firms to “over-pollute” in terms of one waste stream, but only under the condition that they
overcomply in aggregate across a larger portfolio of waste streams.206
Firms also understand that regulation can have a differential effect on competitors in an industry.
For example, DuPont supported a ban on chlorofluorocarbons, at least in part because it had
developed a substitute, a non-ozone–depleting chemical that would be in demand once the ban was in
place.207 The regulatory ban, in effect, gave it a competitive advantage over technologically lagging
rivals. Or consider another example: in the 1980s, a variety of US statutes imposed financial
responsibility, or minimum capital requirements, on firms in certain industries (waste disposal, oil
vessels and pipeline operators, gas stations with underground fuel storage tanks, and mine operators).
These rules, which led polluters to internalize pollution costs rather than go bankrupt or dissolve prior
200
Winston Harrington, “Enforcement Leverage When Penalties Are Restricted,” Journal of Public Economics 37 (1988): 29–53.
R. Kasperson, D. Golding, and S. Tuler, “Social Distrust as a Factor in Siting Hazardous Facilities and Communicating Risks,”
Journal of Social Issues 48 (1992): 161–187; and Michael Barclay, “Hazardous Waste Management Facility Siting,” in Hazardous
Waste Management Engineering, ed. Edward Martin (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1987), 469–506.
202
K. I. MacDonald, “The Devil is in the (Bio)Diversity: Private Sector “Engagement” and the Restructuring of Biodiversity
Conservation, Antipode 42 (2010): 513–550.
203
Christopher McCrudden, “Corporate Social Responsibility and Public Procurement,” in The New Corporate Accountability:
Corporate Social Responsibility and The Law, ed. Doreen McBarnet, Aurora Voiculescu, and Tom Campbell (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), 93-118; Darren Ford, “Public-Sector Procurement and Corporate Social Responsibility,” in The
Sustainable Enterprise: Profiting from Best Practice, ed. Christopher Stephen Brown (London: Kogan Page, 2005), 49.
204
Investments made today can raise future costs of regulation if, for example, regulations make previous investments obsolete or
require costly retrofitting.
205
Stefan Lutz, Thomas P. Lyon, and John W. Maxwell, “Quality Leadership When Regulatory Standards Are Forthcoming, Journal of
Industrial Economics 48, no. 3 (2000): 331–348.
206
James Boyd, Janice Mazurek, Alan Krupnick, and Allen Blackman, “The Competitive Implications of Facility-Specific
Environmental Agreements: The Intel Corporation and Project XL,” in Environmental Regulation and Market Power: Competition,
Time Consistency, and International Trade, ed. E. Petrakis, E. S. Sartzetakis, and A. Xepapadeas (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar,
2000), 95-115.
207
Paul Portney, “The (Not So) New Corporate Social Responsibility: An Empirical Perspective,” Review of Environmental Economics
and Policy 2, no. 2 (2008): 261–275.
201
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to the payment of environmental claims, served an important policy purpose. But they also had
important competitive effects, favoring large firms over small firms (because it was easier for large
firms to demonstrate adequate capital reserves). Accordingly, large firms tended to be less resistant to
the new regulations than small firms and, in fact, may have privately supported the new regulations
because of their expected effect on smaller competitors.208 Finally, regulations that impose
environmental requirements on new firms but grandfather existing firms can be used to deter entry
and protect incumbents from competition.
A-5. Employee, Manager, and Director Motivations
Businesses also may be motivated to pursue beyond-compliance environmental objectives
because they can positively affect employee morale, productivity, and success in hiring.209 Some
evidence even suggests that sustainability practices, by positively influencing various aspects of
corporate culture, translate into greater profitability.210 Also, some evidence suggests that employees
of “green businesses” are willing to accept below-market wages, the theory being that they are
informally “compensated” by being associated with such employers.211 Other studies, however, have
found little or no such wage effects.212
Some analysts have suggested that chief executive officers and other managers may have some
ability to divert corporate resources to their own personal philanthropic goals, and that therefore the
personal values of managers, rather than profit motives, may drive environmental behavior.213
Some evidence also suggests that the composition of a business’s board of directors is related to its
environmental practices and performance.214 For example, larger boards and those with a higher
proportion of active chief executive officers and legal experts exhibit more proenvironmental
behaviors. This suggests that the expertise and values of directors may play an important role in
affecting firm behavior.
A-6. Supply Chain, “Business-to-Business” Motivations
Up to this point, we have discussed environmental behaviors motivated by a business’s
interactions with consumers, NGOs, employees and directors, and political actors. But increasingly,
business-to-business interactions can also drive beyond-compliance environmental action. The
208
James Boyd, “Financial Responsibility for Environmental Obligations: Are Bonding and Assurance Rules Fulfilling Their Promise?”
Research in Law and Economics 20 (2002): 417-486.
209
D. W. Greening and D. B. Turban, “Corporate Social Performance as a Competitive Advantage in Attracting a Quality Workforce,”
Business & Society 39, no. 3 (2000): 254–280.; Tara Behrend, Becca Baker, and Lori Thompson, “Effects of Pro-Environmental
Recruiting Messages: The Role of Organizational Reputation,” Journal of Business and Psychology 24, no. 3 (2009): 341–350.
210
Robert Eccles, Ioannis Ioannou, and George Serafeim, “The Impact of a Corporate Culture of Sustainability on Corporate
Behavior and Performance” (Working Paper 12-035, Harvard Business School, 2011).
211
Robert Frank, “Can Socially Responsible Firms Survive in a Competitive Market?” in Codes of Conduct: Behavioral Research into
Business Ethics, ed. David Messick and Ann Tenbrunsel (New York: Russel Sage Foundation, 1996), 214–227; and Robert Frank,
What Price the Moral High Ground? Ethical Dilemmas in Competitive Environments (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2003).
212
Patrick Francois, “Making a Difference: Labor Donations in the Production of Public Goods” (Working Paper Series no. 04/093,
CMPO, University of Bristol, 2004).
213
Michael C. Jensen, “Value Maximization, Stake-holder Theory, and the Corporate Objective Function,” Business Ethics Quarterly
12, no. 2 (2002): 235–256.; and J. H. Choper, J. C. Coffee, and R. J. Gilson, Cases and Materials on Corporations, 6th ed. (London:
Little, Brown & Co., 2004).
214
Corrinne Post, Noushi Rahman, and Emily Rubow, “Green Governance: Boards of Directors’ Composition and Environmental
Corporate Social Responsibility,” Business and Society 50, no. 1 (2011): 189–223; and Charl De Villiers, Vic Nalker, and Chris van
Staden, “The Effect of Board Characteristics on Firm Environmental Performance,” Journal of Management 37, no. 6 (2011): 1636–
1663.
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production of almost all consumer goods and services involves “chained” business relationships
between suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. Wal-Mart is estimated to have 57,000
suppliers in the United States alone, with tens of thousands more internationally.215 The average
automobile is composed of 20,000 different parts, produced by thousands of different suppliers.216
Apple, a far more vertically integrated company, has supplier relationships with 156 different
companies (and each of those has its own supplier relationships). Supply chain relationships are
extremely important, both to a descriptive understanding of business behavior and as entry points for
strategies to change business behavior.
Large global brands, particularly those selling directly to individual consumers, are increasingly
concerned, not only with their own reputations and environmental performance, but also with the
reputation and practices of their suppliers. Apple doesn’t make its own logic boards; Tiffany & Co.
doesn’t mine its own diamonds; Wal-Mart doesn’t make its own t-shirts; and Starbucks doesn’t grow
its own coffee. But consumers understand that when they purchase from those firms they are,
indirectly, supporting those firms’ supply chains. For example, consumer reaction to the labor
practices of Nike suppliers in the 1990s created a crisis for the company, as its brand became
associated with “slave wages” and abusive factory conditions in the developing world. Consumers also
understand that, even when not in direct control over labor or environmental performance, the
companies from which they purchase goods and services have a potentially large influence over the
choices and behavior of their suppliers.
Business incentives related to supplier relationships mirror all of the motivations and behaviors
described earlier in this section. First consider motivations related to what we earlier referred to as
the “foundational theory” of business behavior: namely, the incentives created by formal social
interventions via law and regulation. In this realm, businesses concern themselves with supply chain
behavior primarily out of fear of legal liability.
Liability laws are designed, in part, to internalize the social costs created by firms—costs that are
due to inadequate product safety or environmental damage, for example. Liability laws not only
compensate victims, they also create a powerful incentive for risks and damages to be avoided in the
first place. Environmental liability generally seeks to make the “polluter” pay for the damages it
causes, where the polluter is the company or individual whose behavior is directly responsible for the
damage—typically, the operator of a polluting facility or other operation. However, in the United
States and some other countries, liability can be extended from this polluter to a wide variety of
entities, including parent corporations and business partners in a chain of supply and distribution
relationships.217 Extended liability addresses several public policy problems. First, it helps address
problems created by the bankruptcy or dissolution of polluting firms.218 Extended liability broadens
the pool of private capital available to compensate victims and finance remediation. Second, when a
215
Emily Schmitt, “The Profits and Perils of Supplying to Wal-Mart,” Bloomberg BusinessWeek, July 14, 2009,
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/jul2009/sb20090714_270767.htm; and Paul Baier, “Why Walmart’s Better
Supplier Scorecard Is a Big Deal,” GreenBiz.com, April 19, 2012, http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2012/04/19/why-walmarts-bettersupplier-scorecard-big-deal.
216
Nick Bunkley, “Lacking Parts, GM Will Close Plant,” The New York Times, March 17, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/business/global/18auto.html.
217
For example, the US Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act imposes what is called joint and
several liability on firms involved in business relationships generating environmental harm.
218
Steven Shavell, “The Judgment-Proof Problem,” International Review of Law and Economics 6 (1986): 45; William Landes and
Richard Posner, “Joint and Multiple Tortfeasors: An Economic Analysis,” Journal of Legal Studies 9 (1980): 517–555; and Lewis
Kornhauser and Richard Revesz, “Apportioning Damages among Potentially Insolvent Actors,” Journal of Legal Studies 19 (1990):
617–651.
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business is jointly liable it has a strong incentive to monitor the safety of the firms with which it does
business. Accordingly, extended liability generates private-sector self-monitoring and ostracism of
firms that cannot produce or signal adequate environmental performance.
In this context, we see formal, regulatory motivations for businesses to worry about the
environmental behavior of suppliers and other business partners. However, even in the United States,
where liability law is particularly well established and aggressively applied, there are significant limits
to the ability of liability law to incentivize behavior change through a supply chain. For example, brand
leverage over a supplier may not be sufficient to make a retailer liable for environmental damages
caused by a supplier.219 Moreover, many supply chain impacts of greatest concern involve suppliers in
different countries and, in particular, in the developing world. In general, it is very difficult—if not
impossible—for a US corporation to be held liable for damages caused by an international supplier.
Supply chain incentives are therefore more likely to be driven by more “informal” profit motives.
Again, these mirror the motivations highlighted earlier, such as consumer demand for green products,
political incentives, and the importance of corporate reputation to employees.
Consider, for example, the discussion of certification as a signaling device. Earlier, we discussed
this in the context of signaling to consumers. But certification is arguably of greater importance
between business partners. Firms wishing to purchase green inputs from suppliers and other business
partners may, like end-product consumers, find it difficult to judge the environmental quality or
impacts of their suppliers’ products. The certification of wood products is a good example. Lumber
retailers are far removed (geographically and contractually) from the forest managers and
landowners, many of them in the developing world, responsible for harvesting practices. A firm whose
reputation is vulnerable to charges of poor environmental stewardship therefore benefits greatly from
an intermediary, certifying institution (such as the Forest Stewardship Council).
A related strategy is for firms to audit supplier conduct and transparently disclose supplier
information. For example, this year, Apple Computer joined a small, but growing set of corporations
(Nike, Intel, and Hewlett-Packard), in publicly disclosing a list of its suppliers.220 Alone, such disclosure
is no guarantee of environmental performance. But it makes identification (and oversight) of these
companies easier for stakeholders. This in itself is an important signaling device because it increases
Apple’s incentive to make sure those suppliers are good actors. Apple has also significantly increased
its auditing of suppliers.221 These audits are conducted in part in reference to “supplier codes of
conduct” that formally establish the company’s expectations for supplier behavior and practices.
Although Apple is mostly self-auditing, it is also opening those audits to independent auditing
institutions.
These kinds of supply chain initiatives are fairly recent, not particularly widespread, and often the
result of external pressure (e.g., boycotts and bad publicity) rather than more proactive strategies.222 It
is also not a coincidence that supply chain behaviors tend to be associated with large, well-known
brands. Branding is a competitive strategy to generate consumer loyalty, awareness, and publicity. The
flip side of this strategy is that valuable brands are particularly sensitive to stakeholder pressure and
negative publicity; they have more to lose if that brand is tarnished, and popular brands inherently
219
See for example, Shell Oil v. Meyer Ind., No. 79S04-9801-CV-43, Supreme Court of Indiana, (1998).
Apple, Inc., “Apple Suppliers 2011” (2012), http://images.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/pdf/Apple_Supplier_List_2011.pdf.
221
Apple audited 39 suppliers in 2007, and 239 in 2011.
222
For example, Apple’s sustainability efforts can be interpreted as a response to unfavorable media coverage over the last five
years.
220
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draw more public attention. Therefore, all else being equal, supply chain motivations for beyondcompliance behavior are most likely to be associated with the most valuable brands.
These same factors also make valuable brands particularly desirable targets for advocacy
pressure. Knowing the power of “brand fear,” sustainability NGOs will rationally pursue valuable
brands to maximize their leverage and achieve the greatest possible environmental improvements.
Supply chain strategies are also a compelling opportunity for sustainability advocates to change the
behavior of small firms and behavior in the developing world—precisely because large western
brands can be linked via supply chains to this larger universe of businesses. However, caution is also
warranted. Although “top-of-the-chain” incentives to promote green supply may be clear, there are
inevitably incentives “down the chain” to continue to exploit cheaper products and practices with
potentially greater environmental impacts. Monitoring and certification of practices through the
supply chain is therefore important and should not be entirely left to the company itself.
A-7. The “Responsible Investment” Community
Companies, particularly those that are publicly traded, rely on individuals, portfolio managers, and
institutional investors to raise and price their capital. Is environmental behavior motivated in part by
companies’ desires to attract investment? Clearly, if environmental performance is related to
profitability, one will see a correlation between that performance and investment. But might investors
be interested in more than profitability? Or might they use environmental performance as a signal of
future profitability?
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a generic term used to describe many of the business
behaviors described above. Over the last several decades, so-called “socially responsible” investment
vehicles have grown significantly. As of 2012, 11 percent of dollars under professional management in
the United States were in such funds ($3.31 trillion, compared to $639 billion in 1995). Environmental
responsibility specifically is now incorporated into the management of 551 investment vehicles with
$240 billion in assets under management.223
What explains the growth in such funds? One explanation is that some investors do not invest for
profits alone, but rather for a combination of profits and philanthropic benefits. If a business is
providing social benefits, investors may view their investment as, in part, a charitable contribution.224
However, the most obvious explanation for such funds is that they identify portfolios that
outperform comparable investments that are not socially responsible. Given the various profit
motivations for beyond-compliance products, investments, and practices described above, a
reasonable hypothesis is that firms adopting them, particularly in aggregate, would see above-average
market performance. In other words, socially and environmentally responsible firms may signal highquality products, processes, and management that translate into greater long-run profitability. In fact,
the ultimate test of whether the environmental motivations described above do, in fact, explain
business behavior is whether they can be related to a firm’s profitability.
223
There has also been a corresponding trend in shareholder activism relating to environmental performance, even though most
environmental resolutions are not accepted. Specifically, shareholder vote percentages favoring environmental and social
resolutions have been steadily increasing over recent years. See US SIF, Report on Sustainable and Responsible Investing Trends in
the United States with Reflections on Sustainable and Responsible Investment (Washington, DC, 2012).
224
J. Graff Zivin and Arthur Small, “A Modigliani-Miller Theory of Altruistic Corporate Social Responsibility,” B.E. Journals in
Economic Analysis and Policy: Topics in Economic Analysis and Policy 5, no. 1 (2005): 1–19.
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Are Environmentally Responsible Firms More Profitable?
If the profit motives described in this section are real—and therefore of relevance to the
conservation community—we should see evidence that environmentally proactive
businesses are more profitable. So what does the evidence show?
Numerous studies have addressed this question using different statistical methods and
looking at different categories of investment. In general, they show that socially
responsible investments underperform or are statistically indistinguishable from
conventional investments, particularly when adjusted for the risks of particular stocks
and portfolios. Similarly, a meta-analysis of firms focused on firm-specific measures of
corporate social responsibility (CSR; as opposed to socially responsible investment
vehicles) found that, for a significant majority of firms, the relationship between CSR and
profitability was not statistically significant. However, a more positive spin on that
study’s findings is that CSR reduced profitability in less than 2 percent of the companies
in the sample. Another general statement is that little empirical evidence supports the
idea that firms engage in CSR out of altruism—that is, a willingness to sacrifice profits to
satisfy social goals.
This broader literature usually examines investments that are socially responsible in a
very broad set of ways, including those that focus on social justice, worker conditions,
and open governance in addition to environmental responsibility. In addition, the
definitions of “environmental responsibility” used by investment funds are varied and
often vague. One problem is that CSR is often defined and quantified in ways that are
more cosmetic than substantive. For these reasons, the findings of the literature on
social responsibility financial market performance leave something to be desired as far
as our more specific question is concerned.
Against that background, one should pay particular attention to a recent study that looks
more concretely at firm-specific practices. The study stratified firms into two samples
based on fairly specific managerial and environmental practices, such as compensation
policies tied to environmental performance, independent auditing of performance,
formal stakeholder engagement practices, policies to reduce emissions and improve
energy or water efficiency, and environmental criteria used to select suppliers. In
addition to the study’s methodological rigor, what is notable is the inclusion of these
specific variables (rather than vague indicators of social responsibility). Interestingly, the
study found that “high-sustainability” firms, defined as those exhibiting such practices,
significantly outperformed their “low-sustainability” counterparts over an 18-year
period ending in 2010. Specifically, $1 invested in the former portfolio would have grown
to $22.60 over the period, as opposed to $15.40.
A-8. Organizational Failure Hypothesis
To this point, we have emphasized theories of business behavior that assume firms are motivated
by a desire to maximize profits and are able to identify and act on profit-making opportunities. A
competing school of thought holds that firms are not always rational, profit-maximizing “machines.”
Some argue, for example, that environmental investments and innovation can often save or make
money, but that firms nevertheless fail to take advantage of these opportunities.
Some have suggested that strict environmental regulations in the long run improve firm
profitability by stimulating early adoption of innovations that ultimately become competitively
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advantageous, otherwise known as the “Porter hypothesis.”225 The corporate failure embedded in this
hypothesis is that firms require government regulation to get them to do things that are in their
economic interest, even without regulation.
As it may be inconsistent with profit-maximizing behavior, the Porter hypothesis has come under
substantial criticism.226 The explanations for why firms might not act in their own self-interest are
various and include information barriers, accounting-based distortions, or inappropriate managerial
incentive schemes. As an example, Porter suggests that assignment of environmental issues to
corporate departments that lack full profit responsibility leads to excessively narrow and incremental
decisions.227 He also suggests that firms use inappropriately high hurdle rates to screen environmental
investments. A related observation is that firms may tend to overestimate the costs of improved
environmental performance. For example, an analysis of waste reduction at chemical plants concluded
that waste reduction occurred in some cases only in response to regulation, though plants found it to
be cost-effective once in practice.228 At the same time, behavioral economics increasingly emphasizes
the importance of psychological realities that may conflict with purely rational profit-maximizing
behavior.229
To interpret this literature requires one to distinguish between “organizational failure” and
“organizational irrationality.” That businesses (and people) guess wrong, make mistakes, and fail to
manage themselves in a conceptually ideal way is not evidence of irrationality. What would evidence
of business irrationality look like? An irrational business would be one that knowingly acts against its
own financial interests. But to our knowledge, no empirical evidence suggests that businesses
systematically behave in this way. As argued earlier, business behaviors that appear altruistic (e.g.,
beyond-compliance behaviors) may be entirely rational and profit motivated.
One can make a much stronger case that organizational barriers, mismanagement, and inadequate
information can inhibit environmental investments. For example, since the 1990s, an expanding
literature has documented problematic accounting practices with the potential to bias environmental
decisionmaking.230 Frequent targets for criticism are the allocation of environmental costs to general
overhead accounts, the failure to account for future liabilities, and the failure to measure the impact of
environmental decisions on corporate image and customer and supplier relationships. Imperfect
environmental accounting can lead businesses to “miss” investment, procurement, process, and
product design opportunities that have both financial and environmental benefits.
This perspective has motivated efforts and best practices to improve so-called environmental
accounting.231 But the failure to adopt improved accounting practices is not evidence of corporate
irrationality. Within the private sector, one would be hard pressed to find a manager uninterested in
more accurate, detailed environmental information. After all, better information leads to better (i.e.,
more profitable) decisions. Rather, firms’ imperfect accounting practices can be better explained by
225
Michael Porter and Claas van der Linde, “Toward a New Conception of the Environment–Competitiveness Relationship,” Journal
of Economic Perspectives, 9, no. 4 (1995): 97–118.
226
Karen Palmer, Wallace E. Oates, and Paul R. Portney, “Tightening Environmental Standards: The Benefit–Cost or the No-Cost
Paradigm?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 9 (1995): 119–132.
227
Michael Porter, “Green and Competitive: Ending the Stalemate,” Harvard Business Review, Sept.–Oct. (1995): 120–134.
228
David Sarokin, Warren Muir, Catherine Miller, and Sebastian Spurber, Cutting Chemical Wastes: What 29 Organic Chemical
Plants Are Doing To Reduce Hazardous Wastes (New York: Inform, 1985).
229
See, for example, Thaler and Sunstein, Nudge.
230
EPA, Environmental Cost Accounting for Capital Budgeting: A Benchmark Survey of Management Accountants (EPA 742-R-95005, Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, Washington, DC, 1995).
231
Tuula Moilanen and Christopher Martin, Financial Evaluation of Environmental Investments (Houston: Gulf Publishing, 1996);
and Marc Epstein, Measuring Corporate Environmental Performance (Montvale, NJ: Institute of Management Accountants, 1996).
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57
the fact that better information, tools, and management are costly. Most studies that explore corporate
environmental decisions in close detail find that managers rationally, if imperfectly, weigh the private
benefits, costs, and risks of those investments.232
Case Study: Development of a “Beyond-Compliance” Green Business Program
Collaboration among government agencies can be an important boon to pro-environment business
behavior. Collaboration across agencies can be difficult, because of their silo-like segregation of legal,
regulatory, and programmatic responsibilities. But communication, trust, and coordination among
agencies is particularly important to the business community. For example, business owners may get a
fragmented, or even contradictory, sense of compliance responsibilities when agencies are not
coordinated. Silo-like inspection, monitoring, and compliance activities also represent a missed
opportunity to share information, avoid duplication, and identify mutually beneficial compliance
strategies.
Innovative, integrated compliance initiatives can be good for business, good at changing business
behavior, and good for the environment. Consider the case of the Bay Area Green Business Program.
John Garn is a sustainability consultant based in Sonoma County, California. A friend of his, who has long
owned an auto repair shop, shared an interesting story in 1993. A wastewater inspector had visited his
facility and told him he could no longer pour solvents down the drain. Instead, he was told to collect them
in a container and allow them to evaporate. Roughly six months later, an air quality inspector came
through and fined him $1,000 for air quality violations. John reached out to the City of Santa Rosa and
discovered that the city was facing significant noncompliance costs for violating Bay Area Air Quality
Management District standards due to high levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from the water
entering the regional wastewater treatment plant and then off-gassing. The problem’s technical solution
had a $40 million–plus price tag; fines for not addressing the violation were also steep. The city’s other
option was to develop an educational program to reduce the VOC load coming to the plant. John was
asked to undertake this effort.
Phase I: County Auto Industry. John used his connections with Santa Rosa wastewater inspectors to
identify and reach out to all of the regulatory agencies with jurisdiction over auto shops. This group
included city, county, and state agencies (specifically the Department of Toxic Substances Control
[DTSC]) as well as federal agencies, including the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Representatives from the agencies were invited to a
meeting, and asked to bring their relevant inspection forms. The group discovered that, to be in full
compliance, an auto shop owner had to fill out 48 pages of inspection forms. The group then looked for
overlaps and other opportunities to consolidate the forms. Within a few meetings, they had reduced the
forms to just eight pages and were able to quickly achieve full agency sign-off on this new streamlined
compliance process. The Sonoma Environmental Quality Assurance Council was created to carry forward
this cross-agency collaboration and communication.
Several positives of this new compliance approach were quickly identified. First, once the agencies
started communicating and sharing information, they were able to identify a set of particularly
responsible businesses that they could put on a lower-scrutiny inspection track. For the first time ever,
businesses started volunteering for and requesting inspections. This was linked to the fact that inspection
sign-off came with a window seal telling customers that the business was in compliance as well as a 10
percent reduction in permit fees. This customer “eco-feedback” gave businesses the ability to
differentiate themselves, and it gave regulators a positive tool in what were previously more adversarial
relationships. It also gave regulators a very visible tool for reprimanding businesses that developed
compliance violations. As opposed to the lengthy administrative processes needed to fine a business, the
232
James Boyd, Searching for the Profit in Pollution Prevention: Case Studies in the Corporate Evaluation of Environmental
Opportunities (EPA 742-R-98-005, Washington, DC: EPA, 1998).
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58
seal could immediately be pulled off the window. The inspectors reported that this often motivated
business owners to ask how they could immediately address the problem. In 1994, just one year after
implementing the new process, 88 of the 275 auto shops were certified as in full environmental
compliance and the percentage of VOCs entering the wastewater plant had decreased by 87 percent,
implying a huge savings to the City of Santa Rosa. Through the monthly Sonoma Environmental Quality
Assurance Council meetings, additional opportunities for collaboration emerged. The agencies developed
joint training programs and, by sharing some of the red flags for each of the regulatory sectors, they were
able to create “super inspectors”—those with broad regulatory knowledge beyond their specific agencies.
Phase II: EPA and DTSC Support for Bay Area Green Business Program. Around this same time, EPA Region
9 was launching its Pollution Prevention and Awareness program. However, its organizational structure
hadn’t required any cross-department communication between inspectors and compliance assistance
officers. This led to a negative cycle in which the officers would visit businesses and encourage them to
join the pollution prevention program and then a few weeks or months later an inspector would visit
some of these same businesses and fine them for violations. Some of the businesses formed the false
assumption that the pollution prevention staff was actually doing reconnaissance and reporting
violations to regulators. Participation in the pollution prevention program plummeted. EPA’s Office of
Enforcement and Compliance Assurance learned about the Sonoma County auto industry experiment and
commissioned John to write up the Sonoma experience, followed by a request that the Sonoma program
be used as a model for a larger “beyond-compliance” initiative. EPA envisioned a multi-industry Green
Business program for the Bay Area, focused on water, waste, energy, and pollution prevention.
The DTSC partnered with EPA Region 9 to support the rollout, financed through the collection of
enforcement fines. Representatives from the Association of Bay Area Governments, DTSC, and EPA
worked in consultation with John to develop a three-page assessment form to determine which of the
nine Bay Area counties were best positioned to implement this type of program. The program leads
interfaced with industry associations and held monthly meetings, with seven of the nine counties
participating, to get feedback and vetting for a beyond-compliance program. In 1997, the Bay Area Green
Business Program was formally launched in Alameda, Sonoma, Marin, Contra Costa, and Santa Clara
counties. San Francisco followed, and by 2002 all nine Bay Area counties were participating. Today, there
are Green Business certification programs tailored to the auto industry, printers, wineries, vineyards,
hotels, and general offices throughout the entire state of California. The initial DTSC representative, Matt
McCarron, now serves as the program’s state director and EPA has used the program as a model for other
state programs.
Part Two—(II: A) Business Behaviors: Summary of Key Findings

Most theories of business behavior emphasize financial motivations.

Traditional approaches to environmental regulation, such as product and process standards,
taxes, subsidies, and liability laws, can be thought of as sticks and carrots that use the profit
motive to alter business behavior.

Government policy is not the only source of pro-environment business incentives.

Voluntary, “beyond-compliance” environmental business actions are more likely to be driven
by profit motivations than by altruism.

Pro-environment business behaviors are driven by a range of consumer, employee, business
partner, and community factors.

Businesses react to a range of social factors, but they can also shape individual, community,
and public attitudes through, for example, marketing and lobbying.
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
Marketing, labeling, and certification programs have been shown to influence consumer
behavior (and thus the features of products sold by businesses), but the environmental
benefits of labeling and certification programs are poorly understood.

Supply chain motivations for beyond-compliance behavior are most likely to be associated
with large companies and valuable brands.

Because large companies typically rely on many small businesses as suppliers, the brand
concerns of large businesses can be leveraged into more pro-environment small business
behavior.

Employee, manager, and director attitudes appear to have an impact on the environmental
behavior, though the size of the effect is unclear.

Many studies of the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and
profitability; most of which show that socially responsible investments underperform or are
statistically indistinguishable from conventional investments.

Recent research focused on more specific environmental practices shows that more
sustainable firms financially outperform less sustainable firms.

Pro-environment business behaviors can be encouraged by government reforms that
streamline permitting, monitoring, and enforcement programs.
B. Communities and Collective Action
As noted in our brief discussion of economic theory and environmentally significant behavior,
natural resource management decisions often involve common pool resources in which access to
resources is unrestricted or difficult to restrict.233 Increasingly, resource management decisions also
involve large landscapes and interconnected environmental issues. These decision contexts involve
multiple governing jurisdictions, many agencies at different levels of government, and public and
private lands and resources. Consider a set of water management examples: water quality
management in the Chesapeake Bay requires cooperation among 128 municipalities and multiple
states. Klamath Basin discussions that attempted to resolve longstanding water supply–demand
imbalances involved 50 different signatories representing 50 federal, state, tribal, local, and privatesector entities.234 Discussions about the Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint watersheds, relevant to
addressing water constraints in the Southeast, involve three states, dozens of municipalities, and
multiple water users who tap water for multiple purposes.235 Management of the Colorado River
involves seven states; dozens of municipalities; multiple federal, state, tribal, and local governments
and agencies; and Mexico, all linked through various compacts, treaties, laws, regulations, and local
233
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions of Collective Action (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1990). See also E. Ostrom, R. Gardner, and J. Walker, eds., Rules, Games, and Common Pool Resources (Ann Arbor, MI:
University of Michigan Press, 1994).
234
See Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement for the Sustainability of Public and Trust Resources and Affected Communities (2010),
http://klamathrestoration.gov/sites/klamathrestoration.gov/files/Klamath-Agreements/Klamath-Basin-Restoration-Agreement-218-10signed.pdf.
235
For brief descriptions see, for example, “Alabama Coosa Tallapoosa Apalachicola Chattahoochee Flint River Basins
Comprehensive Water Resources Study,” Northwest Florida Water Management District, accessed April 9, 2012,
www.nwfwmd.state.fl.us/rmd/acfcomp/cstudy.htm; and G. Loeffler and J. L. Meyer, “Chattahoochee–Flint River Basin,” University
of Georgia River Basin Center, accessed April 9, 2012, www.rivercenter.uga.edu/education/k12resources/basinsofga2.htm. For a
discussion of water management conflicts and efforts to address them through multijurisdictional initiatives, see C. I. Lin,
“Apalachicola–Chattahoochee–Flint Tri-State Negotiation,” AquaPedia, Tufts University, February 2009,
https://wikis.uit.tufts.edu/confluence/display/aquapedia/Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint+Tri-State+Negotiation.
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ordinances.236 Complexity also characterizes land management decisions regarding traditional and
renewable energy facility siting, biodiversity management, natural hazards management, coastal
restoration, wildland fire management, and other natural resource management issues.
These decision contexts involve questions such as how much water should flow across hundreds
of thousands of acres to restore the Everglades “River of Grass?” Should dams be constructed or
removed in the northwestern United States? How can the United States access energy on land and
offshore while sustaining ecosystems and wildlife? How can fish populations be sustained while
providing sustenance to growing populations? These questions involve matters of science, values, and
policy. They also arouse conflict. Transcending such conflict is often necessary to secure conservation
action and sustain it over time.
Successful conservation in these settings requires the actions of multiple public-sector, nonprofit,
and private-sector participants working in concert toward common goals and with coordinated
actions. Conservation, like a growing number of public-sector activities, “entails producing services
with the public more than delivering services to the public.”237 Community engagement becomes, thus,
an important aspect of addressing these issues.238
Although there are many definitions of community, we draw on the approach suggested by
Agrawal and Gibson as particularly relevant to examining conservation and natural resource
management challenges. They suggest that “community must be examined in the context of
development and conservation by focusing on multiple interests and actors within communities, on
how these actors influence decisionmaking, and on the internal and external institutions that shape
the decisionmaking process.”239 In other words, they suggest a focus more on institutions and
decisionmaking processes than on the social, cultural, or other descriptive characteristics of
communities.
In this section, we examine community-level behavioral insights regarding how collections of
interests and stakeholders engage, collaborate, build legitimacy, and resolve conflicts around
conservation issues. As noted above, most conservation goals and projects require multiparty
coordination and acceptance. In some cases, formal processes imposed by law and regulation frame
these multiparty interactions. In other cases, stakeholder interactions are less formal but no less
important to conservation success. In both formal and less formal settings, perceptions, norms, and
knowledge—and how they vary across individuals and groups—can drive the success or failure of
establishing and achieving conservation objectives. A growing body of research in political science,
organization theory, the sociology of scientific knowledge, and social anthropology provides insights
into participatory processes, collaborative institutions, and organization design. This research informs
public perceptions, knowledge flows, the perceived legitimacy of decisions, and corresponding actions.
236
One example of the multistate complexity of Colorado River management is evident in the 2007 “shortage sharing” agreement.
See Secretary of the Interior, Record of Decision: Colorado River Interim Guidelines for Lower Basin Shortages and the Coordinated
Operations for Lake Powel and Lake Mead (Washington, DC: US Department of the Interior, 2007),
www.usbr.gov/lc/region/programs/strategies/RecordofDecision.pdf.
237 John Clayton Thomas, Citizen, Customer, Partner: Engaging the Public in Public Management (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe,
2012), 86.
238
Arun Agrawal and Clark Gibson, “Enchantment and Disenchantment: The Role of Community in Natural Resource Conservation,”
World Development 27, no. 4 (1999): 629–649.
239
Ibid., 629 (Abstract).
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B-1. The Community Context—Insights from Economics
In many, if not most, cases, significant conservation efforts go beyond what individuals can do on
their own. An important context is the community level, where individuals come together to achieve
some goal or set of goals. Here we first examine economic insights regarding environmental choices in
a community context and then turn to collaborative decisionmaking settings in a conservation context.
B-1a. The Free Rider Problem: One fundamental impediment to collective action, as described by
economists, is the incentive to be a “free rider.” In essence, each person decides to let others carry the
burden of providing a public good, with the result that the good is underprovided or under-supported.
Free riding is a concern in collective bargaining (creating a justification for unionization), support for
public television and radio, provision of defense and security, and a variety of conservation contexts.
One familiar form of this problem, known in fields from game theory and economics to psychology and
philosophy, is the “prisoners’ dilemma.” The idea is that even though people are better off cooperating,
individually, we may be better off not cooperating, so cooperation does not occur. The name comes
from the standard allegory of two people arrested for a crime and separately faced with a choice of
confessing or not confessing. They could both secure light sentences by not confessing (i.e., by
cooperating with each other), but each can secure a lighter sentence by confessing and testifying
against the other one.
The version of the allegory most familiar in environmental and conservation circles is Garrett
Hardin’s “tragedy of the commons.”240 Hardin’s example involves a community of herdsmen who graze
their cattle on a common pasture. At some point, the pasture can no longer sustain all of the cattle that
each herdsman wants to graze, and the pasture dies off. This reflects a “prisoners’ dilemma”: each
herdsman would be better off with limits on grazing, but no one wants restrictions on their own cattle.
Conservation commons problems abound because many environmental resources are shared, public
goods (many forests, most fisheries) or involve contributions to collective benefits (reduced air or
water pollution or carbon sequestration).
At the community level, economics identifies some potential solutions to the problem. In some
cases, one can have a single owner over a small area who can set rules for how that area is used—
owning the pasture and renting it out, in Hardin’s example. A second conservation-related example
might be a housing developer preserving open space or setting noise limits in covenants that
individual homeowners would have to follow. Economists call this “internalizing the externality.” In
principle, however, these results apply only to settings where one or a small number of owners are
feasible.
B-1b. Responses to the Free Rider Problem: Rules and Governance Responses: In free rider contexts,
affected parties may be able to reach an agreement. In one of the most cited articles in economics and
law, Ronald Coase argues that if all affected parties could agree, they could achieve any mutually
beneficial outcome, including conservation of natural resources.241 Coase’s work spawned an analysis
of how legal rules can either facilitate such agreement (e.g., via clearly defined property rights) or
promote outcomes people would have agreed to had they been able to do so (e.g., via liability rules
that create incentives for risk reduction). These solutions have limits, though, in that formal
agreements or legal rules involving a large number of people may not be something that can be “left to
240
Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science 162 (1968): 1243–1248.
Ronald Coase, “The Problem of Social Cost,” Journal of Law and Economics 3 (1940): 1–44. Fred Shapiro and Michelle Pearse,
“The Most Cited Law Review Articles of All Time,” Michigan Law Review 110 (2012): 1483–1520. Shapiro and Pearse found Coase’s
article to be the most cited, by a large margin over the second-place contender.
241
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the market” because of the costs of arriving at and enforcing mutually acceptable bargains when many
have to agree.242 For example, policies to control pollutants that affect a broad region or nation
typically require a government solution because the private costs of negotiating an agreement with all
potential polluters and victims, contractually enforcing limits on emissions, and compensating victims
would be prohibitive.
Another resolution to prisoners’ dilemma and cooperation problems can arise when people enter
into negotiations repeatedly. Repetition allows for the punishment of non-cooperative behavior, for
example, or for other types of feedback and response that can enhance cooperation. However, “repeat
play” is no guarantee of a cooperative outcome.243
Elinor Ostrom and others have described the emergence of co-managed common pool resources in
a variety of settings in which communities craft complex governing networks.244 Describing these
efforts, Michael McGinnis notes that such governing networks: (a) can enhance legitimacy, (b) create
and use the social capital of local knowledge of local conditions, (c) tailor responses to local conditions,
and (d) offer flexibility in the context of changing conditions.245
The extensive descriptions of the efforts of farmers, fishers, and forest resource users to manage
common pool resources suggest that, despite the lack of an optimal design for such institutions,
certain characteristics are important.246 Ostrom identifies some principles that seem relevant.247
Highlights of these principles include:

clear decision boundaries;

congruence with local and cumulative institutional conditions;

clear decision rules and the delineation of the rights, roles, and responsibilities of participants;

monitoring of users and resources;

sanctions for improper action; and

linkages to the larger governance context.
Although economists describe co-management in terms of its role in overcoming common pool
resource problems, others examine these efforts from a political science perspective, applying social
network analysis. For example, Carlsson and Sandstrom note that, behind the emergence of comanagement practices is the idea that “to cope with complexity of natural resource systems,
institutional arrangements and related management systems should incorporate different actors from
different areas of society.”248 They describe these endeavors in terms of social networks, or “social
structures made up by nodes (actors), which are connected via a multitude of links” (for example, in
242
Guido Calabresi, “Transaction Costs, Resource Allocation and Liability Rules: A Comment,” Journal of Law and Economics 11
(1968): 67–73.
243
Reinhard Selten, “The Chain Store Paradox,” Theory and Decision 9 (1978): 127–159; and Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of
Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
244
Vincent Ostrom, Charles Tiebout, and Robert Warren, “The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical
Inquiry,” American Political Science Review 55 (1961): 831–842.
245
Michael D. McGinnis, “Costs and Challenges of Polycentric Governance” (paper prepared for discussion at Workshop on
Analyzing Problems of Polycentric Governance in the Growing EU, June 16–17, 2005, Berlin).
246
Ibid.
247
Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 1991).
248
Lars Carlsson and Annica Sandstrom, “Network Governance of the Commons,” International Journal of the Commons 2, no. 1
(2008): 34.
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the form of information flows, exchanges of goods, legal relations, and so on).249 Carlsson and
Sandstrom describe six features that are supported by many empirical studies and are associated with
high-functioning co-management. These include the ability to: (a) contribute to improved exchange of
resources, (b) link different levels of organizations, (c) generate access to various skills and
competencies, (d) reduce transactions costs, (e) enhance opportunities for risk sharing, and (f)
establish conflict resolution mechanisms.250
We discuss in more detail various aspects of public engagement, collaboration, and network
governance and their relationship to conservation and common pool resource management later in
this report.
B-2. Communities as Conservation Participants
Many conservation endeavors involve a blend of public- and private-sector resources and
participants. Such collective action, as noted above, is especially relevant to addressing challenges of
common pool resource management and actions on large landscapes that involve multiple
jurisdictions, agencies, and types of participants and many land parcels and water resources.
Public participation in decisions guided by or involving the public sector varies from relatively
passive roles of commenting on public-sector decisions to active roles in framing issues and
participating in the selection and implementation of conservation actions.251 The literature on this
array of roles is vast; we do not intend to summarize it here.252 Instead, our focus is more specifically
on the growing role of active citizen (stakeholder) engagement in collaborative conservation
decisionmaking and how such participation affects attitudes and actions.
Kirsten Leong and others describe an evolution toward public-engagement approaches to
decisionmaking in natural resource management and view this trend as reflecting the increasing
complexity of wildlife management problems.253 They note that, “with wicked problems, the process of
problem formulation and resulting outcome often is the problem. As such, negotiation over the way
the problem is defined, or framed, plays an important role in identifying potential solutions and
determining the relative success of management interventions,”254 a point illustrated in the case study
presented later in this report on a Florida ecosystem services payment program. Leong and her
colleagues point to research showing that failure to recognize differences in ways stakeholders and
agencies conceptualize wildlife problems can deter problem-solving.255 However, the authors suggest
that solving a particular environmental problem is not, in itself, the central purpose of the publicengagement (collaborative governance) paradigm. Instead, such approaches fundamentally are
directed at developing and sustaining “a social foundation that is capable of responding to problems
that may be poorly understood and defined, such as wicked problems …. By emphasizing two-way
249
Ibid.
Ibid., 37.
251
Kirsten M. Leong, John F. Forester, and Daniel J. Decker, “Moving Public Participation beyond Compliance: Uncommon
Approaches To Finding Common Ground,” The George Wright Forum 26, no. 3 (2009): 24.
252
Thomas, Citizen, Customer, Partner.
253
Kirsten Leong, Daniel J. Decker, T. Bruce Lauber, Daniela B. Raik, and William F. Siemer, “Overcoming Jurisdictional Boundaries
through Stakeholder Engagement and Collaborative Governance: Lessons Learned from White-Tailed Deer Management in the US,”
in Beyond the Rural–Urban Divide: Cross-Continental Perspectives on the Differentiated Countryside and Its Regulation, ed. Kjell
Anderson, Minna Lehtola, Erlund Eklund, and Pekka Salmi, Research in Rural Sociology and Development, vol. 14, Beyond the RuralUrban Divide (Bingley, UK: Emerald Group, 2009), Chapter 9.
254
Ibid., 235.
255
Ibid., 242.
250
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symmetric communication and mutual learning about how each party views the problem and its
associated knowledge base, common goals, and potential solutions, can be identified.”256
Clark Gibson and Arun Agrawal note that “conservationist norms cannot be easily introduced into
a community by external actors …. We hardly know which strategies successfully alter the norms
people hold about conservation, especially when the resources in question are a critical part of the
family income.”257 They underscore that, within communities, “individuals negotiate the use,
management, and conservation of resources. They attempt to implement the agreed-upon rules
resulting from their negotiations. And they try to resolve disputes that arise in the processes of
implementation of rules.”258 Many factors can affect negotiations and decisions, including some, like
commodity prices, that may be entirely beyond the control of a community and individuals within that
community.
Some discussion in Part One summarizes research relevant to this consideration. In Part Three, we
provide a case study on a Florida ecosystem services payment program that illuminates the contextspecific nature of the factors that must be included in the design of market-like conservation programs
and how collaborative processes are essential to such design. Here, we turn our attention to
collaboration processes and decisionmaking institutions of co-management and networks. The
relevance of such institutions and their design in collaborative or community conservation
decisionmaking introduces a central question: How does the collective or community decision context
itself affect norms and behavior? A related question is: How do collaborative and participatory
decisionmaking institutions and processes affect conservation actions and outcomes?
B-2a. Collaboration—Relevance to Norms, Actions, and Outcomes: Much of the literature on
collaborative, community-based decisionmaking makes a connection between these processes and the
achievement of measurable environmental or social outcomes. For example, an empirical study of
community-based planning and implementation focused on addressing homelessness found that such
efforts were positively correlated with increased effectiveness.259 Similarly, a number of empirical
studies on collaborative and community-based conservation efforts show evidence of outcomes that
successfully meet established goals, though other studies have more mixed results. For example, one
study of deer population management contrasting collaborative and more traditional public-input
processes finds that the “public input approaches appear better suited to addressing complex
problems and communities of interest, while public engagement approaches may better resolve
wicked problems that affect communities of place.”260
Institutional designs vary widely, perhaps accounting for the mixed results of empirical
evaluations of such processes. As O’Leary and Nidhi underscore, “not all networks are created
equal.”261 The same can be said of public-engagement processes and collaboration in general. O’Leary
and Nidhi note several dimensions along which networks vary. For example, they vary in the
composition, organizational missions, and cultures of participants; their modes of operation; their
256
Ibid.
Agrawal and Gibson, “Enchantment and Disenchantment,” 636.
258
Ibid., 637
259
Evan M. Berman, “Local Government and Community-Based Strategies: Evidence from a National Survey of a Social Problem,”
American Review of Public Administration 26, no. 1 (1996): 71–90.
260
Leong et al., “Overcoming Jurisdictional Boundaries,” Abstract.
261
Rosemary O’Leary and Nidhi Vij, “Collaborative Public Management: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?”
American Review of Public Administration 42, no. 5 (2012): 507–522.
257
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funding; degrees of power; issues of focus; organizational and personal relationships; the decision
forums with which they intersect; and their governance and networking structures.262
A growing literature examines the ecological outcomes of collaborative conservation processes
and networks263 and the relationship between these processes and norms, changes in norms or
attitudes, and conservation action. A number of studies suggest that collaborative decision processes
can influence norms and actions. Two aspects of this research are particularly relevant. First, research
on the role of cognitive processes and heuristics contributes to an understanding of how collaborative
processes, particularly those involving face-to-face engagement, can influence choices and decisions.
Second, some research on collaborative processes has explored their relationship to trust-building and
the role of trust in influencing actions. Trust, as Henry and Dietz point out, “is an important
determinant of sustainability outcomes because it influences strategic interaction between actors
whose individual incentives are not necessarily in alignment with that of the collective.”264
Dietz and Stern note that values themselves are relatively stable by adulthood and that any
evolution or change in values occurs only gradually over long time periods.265 However, “the link
between values and choices can be dynamic on a much shorter time scale.”266 Cognitive processing
that determines choices is influenced by “rules of thumb” and biases, including biases associated with
how one categorizes and perceives particular social, political, and other groups. Individuals both
obtain information from others and process that information using filtering categories through which
they classify people and interactions.267 Their research suggests that decisionmaking is “socially
embedded in the sense that social cues provide guidance and can help simplify the decision
process.”268 Dietz and Stern note:
Consultation with peers and other information sources serves to frame the issue so as to focus
individual attention on a limited subset of all possible links between actions, outcomes, and
values. In this way, social processes define the problem and help construct individual
preferences. The process of consultation allows individuals to tap into a broader body of
experience and calculation than they possess alone. But it also subjects them to influences,
some of them quite subtle, to focus attention in particular directions.269
On the one hand, these cognitive processes help explain why people may mistrust some sources of
information or resist undertaking certain actions—such as, for example, embracing different
agricultural or fishing practices—if the information or proposed actions are presented by social or
political groups viewed with suspicion. On the other hand, the prevalence of this sort of social
262
Ibid., 511–512.
See, for example, J. M. Wondolleck and S. Yaffee, Making Collaboration Work: Lessons from Innovation in Natural Resource
Management (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000); T. M. Koontz and C. W. Thomas, “What Do We Know and Need To Know about
the Environmental Outcomes of Collaborative Management?” Public Administration Review 66, no. 1 (2006): 111–121; R. O’Leary
and L. B. Bingham, eds., The Promise and Performance of Environmental Conflict Resolution (Washington, DC: RFF Press, 2003); and
C. Ansell and A. Gash, “Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice,” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 8,
no. 1 (2007): 67–91.
264
Henry and Dietz, “Information, Networks, and the Complexity of Trust,” 189. See also M. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action:
Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965).
265
Thomas Dietz and Paul C. Stern, “Toward a Theory of Choice: Socially Embedded Preference Construction,” Journal of SocioEconomics 24, no. 2 (1995): 265.
266
Ibid., 265.
267
Ibid., 266.
268
Ibid., 270.
269
Ibid., 271.
263
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66
processing suggests why collaborative processes may play a positive role in framing issues and
influencing choices as participants begin to view one another differently.
Case Example—The Blackfoot Challenge: The 1.5 million-acre Blackfoot Watershed of western
Montana covers diverse habitats and supports ranching, logging, and outdoor recreation on a mix of
public and private lands. On this landscape, a collaborative conservation and management effort
emerged in the 1990s that was formalized in 1993 with the creation of the nonprofit organization, The
Blackfoot Challenge. Its mission is to use a consensus approach that engages public and private
stakeholders to coordinate “efforts to conserve and enhance the natural resources and rural way of life
in the Blackfoot Watershed.”270
The Blackfoot Challenge describes its approach to conservation as “partner-centric” rather than
“biologist-centric,” underscoring the organizers’ perspective that trust-building and coordination are
precursors to effective action. They define biologist-centric conservation as prioritizing conservation
actions based on science, with the resource of concern driving the decision-making focus.271 In
contrast, they describe partner-centric conservation as emerging through social processes and
stakeholder collaboration in ways that bring together local knowledge, technical expertise, biological,
and socioeconomic values.272 They describe their collaborative and partner-driven focus as having
four key elements: (a) inclusivity of stakeholders, (b) agenda-setting through articulation of
community values, (c) a coordinating framework, and (d) use of relevant science.273
Through their collaborative efforts, they have gained the participation of most landowners in the
Blackfoot Valley. They have established conservation restrictions on 70,000 acres; developed agreedupon drought management policies; engaged participants in enhancing irrigation efficiency; and
developed grizzly bear protection strategies, among other actions. These efforts were launched and
have been sustained over a two-decade timeframe. Consistent with research on collaborative
processes, participants describe the efforts as having significantly enhanced trust among landowners
and public-sector agencies, which participants view as the critical element to engaging landowners
and motivating action. The costs of some Blackfoot Challenge initiatives have been borne directly by
participants, a testament to trust-building and peer-to-peer influence. At the same time, government
and philanthropic financial support also provided some economic incentives for participation in some
activities.
B-2b. Trust-Building: A central element of the research literature on collaboration focuses on
changing relationships and, in particular, on trust—its creation, persistence, and, sometimes, its
destruction.274 Adam Henry and Thomas Dietz summarize four factors that influence trust. These
include an individual’s (a) general willingness to take risks, (b) responses to betrayal, (c) sense of
altruism, and (d) assessment of the likelihood that others in a particular setting will act in a
trustworthy fashion.275 They note that, whereas the first three elements are relatively stable personal
attributes, the fourth is subject to change and can be altered “quite readily by evidence.”276
Gary Burnett, “Community-Based Approach to Conservation for the 21st Century,” in Conservation & the Environment:
Conservative Values, New Solutions, ed. P. Lynn Scarlett (Washington, DC: Conservation Leadership Council, 2012), I-2.
271
Greg Neudecker, A. Duvall, and J. Stutzman, in Energy Development and Wildlife Conservation in Western North America, ed. D.
Naugle (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001), Chapter 12.
272
Burnett, “Community-Based Approach,” 3.
273
Ibid., 5.
274
Elinor Ostrom, “A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective Action: Presidential Address, American
Political Science Association, 1997,” American Political Science Review 92, no. 1 (1998): 1–22.
275
Henry and Dietz, “Information, Networks, and the Complexity of Trust,” 193.
276
Ibid., 192.
270
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Much of the literature on collaboration focuses on its role in altering participants’ perceptions of
how likely others engaged in these processes are to follow through on implementing actions agreed
upon in the collaborative process. Emerson, Nabatchi, and Balogh, for example, note that “trust forms
the basis of mutual understanding; generates a sense of interpersonal validation and cognitive
legitimacy;” and “leads to creating bonds of shared commitment.”277 They view the development of
trust as “the sine qua non of collaboration,”278 a perspective affirmed in the experience of the Florida
ecosystem services payment program described in this report.
A common proposition in the literature on collaboration is that “repeated, quality interactions
through principled engagement will help foster trust, mutual understanding, internal legitimacy, and
shared commitment, thereby generating and sustaining shared motivation.”279 This shared motivation
will “enhance and help sustain principled engagement and vice versa.”280
Much of the research on trust-building has focused on relatively small community settings or
experimental settings.281 However, building on Elinor Ostrom’s work on managing common pool
resources, others have broadened their examination of trust within much more complex collaborative
settings. The focus of this broader work is on the “types of institutions—conceptualized as
combinations of various types of rules—that are more likely or less likely to support cooperative
behavior in the face of CPR [common pool resources] dilemmas, conditional on contextual factors such
as the resource system, the resource units, the governance system, and the users.”282 Even this work,
however, may not sufficiently explain how trust-building might occur in settings where the scale of
action is so large that face-to-face interactions are impossible.
This research has a second limitation: much of it has focused on what Henry and Dietz refer to as
“trust in action”—that is, how trust-building in collaborative settings leads to agreement on shared
actions. But Henry and Dietz suggest that many sustainability challenges involve problems of “trust in
information.”283 We turn to these issues of trust in information in discussing the nexus of science and
decisionmaking in collaborative settings as well as in our discussions of communications approaches.
B-2c. Collaborative Processes and Improved Outcomes: A collaborative process often concludes
when there is an implementable and lasting agreement among the agencies, individuals, organizations,
and coalitions that are engaged in, or defer to, the process. Agreement is what we can observe, and a
277
Kirk Emerson, Tina Nabatchi, Stephen Balogh, “An Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance,” Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory 22, no. 1 (2012): 14.
278
Emerson et al., “Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance,” 13. Also see C. Huxham and S. Vangen, Managing To
Collaborate: The Theory and Practice of Collaborative Advantage (New York: Routledge, 2005); J. Koppenjan and E. H. Klijn,
Managing Uncertainty in Networks: A Network Approach to Problem Solving and Decision Making (New York: Routledge, 2004);
and W. D. Leach and P. Sabatier, “To Trust an Adversary: Integrating Rational and Psychological Models of Collaborative Policy
Making,” American Political Science Review 99, no. 4 (2005): 491–503.
279
Emerson et al., “Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance,” 14.
280
Ibid.
281
See, for example, T. Hahn, P. Olsson, C. Folke, and K. Johansson, “Trust-Building, Knowledge Generation and Organizational
Innovations: The Role of a Bridging Organization for Adaptive Comanagement of a Wetland Landscape around Kristianstad,
Sweden,” Human Ecology 34, no. 4 (2006): 573–592. See also L. M. Ruttan, “Sociocultural Heterogeneity and the Commons,”
Current Anthropology 47, no. 5 (2006): 843–853.
282
Henry and Dietz, “Information, Networks, and the Complexity of Trust,” 189. See also E. Ostrom, “A General Framework for
Analyzing Sustainability of Socio-Ecological Systems,” Science 325, 5939 (2009): 419–422.
283
Henry and Dietz, “Information, Networks, and the Complexity of Trust,” 191.
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lasting agreement can be achieved only if a selected path forward makes all participants better off.284
By this logic, a collaborative process that secures agreement must have created joint net benefits and
then distributed the net benefits so all participants’ judge themselves to be better off. If all
participants, in their own judgment, are better off as a result of the selected alternative, and if the
process included all appropriate participants, that alternative might be deemed a “preferred outcome,”
or an outcome that serves the “public interest.”285
Whether negotiated solutions serve the broader public interest can be a source of debate. Some
criticism will almost always be raised.
The first criticism typically relates to the representativeness of the collaboration’s participants.
Participants typically include those who have the authority and ability (or power) to go outside the
collaborative process to get a decision that differs from what the collaboration might agree to.286
However, inviting participants based solely on their power or authority can create equity and fairness
issues. Also, the likelihood of reaching agreement decreases as group size increases. Any collaboration
process must balance concern over representativeness and power with the decisionmaking and
financial costs associated with increased participation. The public choice literature in economics,
discussed briefly later in the report, as well as the literature on environmental negotiation and
alternative dispute resolution (ADR), includes numerous studies and recommendations about how
this dilemma might be addressed through different approaches to structuring group participation.
A second, related criticism of collaborative processes is that they can shift costs to unrepresented
parties, usually the general taxpayer or “the environment.” For instance, a recreational fishing group
may accept a series of recreational enhancements (e.g., boat landings and access points) as
compensation for water management practices that would alter downstream flow. However, the
changes in downstream flows could impose costs on third parties. Therefore, the implication that
social welfare is increased because collaboration is successful hinges on the degree to which
participants internalize the agreement’s costs.
Critics of negotiation and collaboration often argue for broader application of “objective” analysis
to overcome these issues. Edith Stokey and Richard Zeckhauser reflect the belief that benefit–cost
analysis can more comprehensively and completely indicate individual preferences than can
negotiation processes when they write:
One of the great virtues of the benefit–cost approach is that the interests of individuals who
are poorly organized or less closely involved are counted. Even when pushed by powerful
284
One can use success measures for a process other than the substance of an agreement, such as improvements in relationships
(e.g., increased trust) that allow for constructive dialogue during and after the process or aspects of the design and conduct of the
process itself (e.g., transparency and efficiency). Dietz and Stern, Public Participation in Environmental Assessment (see note 3).
These include shared learning as opposed to simply providing people with data and development of respect for other decision
participants’ values and interests. These other measures of success are often preconditions for agreement for the issues at hand
(when such agreement is possible) and can help build a foundation for tackling other issues in the future.
285
Initial agreement on a plan is not sufficient for a success definition. Implementation of the plan should be accompanied by
monitoring of the expected outcomes, using indicators for the same performance measures that were used to agree on a jointly
preferred alternative. The learning about the outcomes of implementation should result in a renegotiation loop, if necessary, to
ensure that agreement is maintained during implementation. The persistence of agreement during implementation is the true
indicator of whether agreement is a reflection of the public interest.
286
Defining who has power can be difficult. For example, a local canoe club may have no formal power alone to affect a decision,
but it can have influence when it acts in coordination with other groups, such as those that are adept at using the press to affect
public opinion. Roger Fisher and William Ury coined the acronym BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) to refer to
the best outcome that is possible if another party will not negotiate. Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating
without Giving In, third ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2011).
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69
interest groups, projects whose benefits do not outweigh their costs will be shown to be
undesirable. The benefits and costs accruing to all—to the highway builders, the
environmentalists, the “little” people,” the users and providers of services, the taxpaying
public—will be counted on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Benefit–cost analysis is a methodology
with which we pursue efficiency and which has the effect of limiting the vagaries of the
political process.287
Similar reservations and suspicions on the efficacy of representative democratic processes remain
decades after these authors expressed their concern.288
Yet reliance on collaborative processes is based on a different set of behavioral, and perhaps
conceptual, premises. Advocates of such processes stress that preferences will be revised, created,
and, indeed, discovered through collaborative learning and the process of choosing. Measuring the
preferences of people distant or removed from the process through the nonmarket valuation
techniques sometimes used in benefit–cost analysis assumes informed and stable preferences. Indeed,
the very act of participation in a collaborative process is an expression of a commitment and
responsibility to discover and refine preferences and interests.289 Differences in opinion on the
efficacy of collaborative approaches to natural resources decisionmaking are ultimately deeply rooted
in differences in beliefs in how people form and express preferences, the efficacy and operation of
representative democratic processes in reflecting these preferences, and the ability and limits of
analysts to know individually held preferences.290
B-2d. Collaborative Action and Stakeholder Engagement—Institutional Designs: The general
literature on cognition, values, collaboration, and trust points to the importance of both institutional
structures and the design of collaborative processes.291 These structures and processes are:
[T]he primary mechanisms available to mediate, soften, attenuate, structure, moderate,
accentuate, and facilitate particular outcomes and actions—whether change is radical,
moderate, or incremental …. When goals are not shared, institutions are significant for two
reasons: they embody power relations that define the interactions among actors who created
the institutions, and they help to structure the interactions that take place around resources—
institutions are provisional agreements on how to accomplish tasks.292
Carlsson and Sandstrom suggest, “To achieve sustainability—in environmental, economic, and
social development—finding appropriate institutions and management systems is vital.”293 We
examine the research on these collaborative and network processes and decisionmaking institutions
with a particular focus on whether and how they facilitate collective conservation action.
287
Edith Stokey and Richard Zeckhauser, A Primer for Policy Analysis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 151.
st
Paul Portney, “Benefit–Cost Analysis,” in Concise Encyclopedia of Economics (Library of Economics and Liberty, 1 edition, 2002),
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/BenefitCostAnalysis.html; J. Loomis, “Use of Nonmarket Valuation Studies in Water Resource
Management Assessments,” Water Resources Update 109 (1997): 5–9.
289
Mark Sagoff, “Should Preferences Count?” Land Economics 70, no. 2 (1994): 127–144.
290
Leonard Shabman and Kurt Stephenson, “Environmental Valuation and Its Economic Critics,” Journal of Water Resources
Planning and Management 126, no. 6 (2000): 382–388.
291
Lawrence Susskind, Sarah McKearnen, and Jennifer Thomas-Larmer, The Consensus-Building Handbook (Thousand Oaks, CA:
Sage Publications, 1999).
292
Agrawal and Gibson, “Enchantment and Disenchantment,” 638.
293
Lars Carlsson and Annica Sandstrom, “Network Governance of the Commons,” International Journal of the Commons 2, no. 1
(2008): 34.
288
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Although they vary in their forms, collaborative efforts generally involve “problem-setting,
direction- setting, and structuring” for implementation actions.294 Governance models patterned
around networks and the sharing of responsibilities have begun to emerge alongside more traditional
hierarchical forms of federalism.295 As noted earlier, these trends are a response to three factors: (a)
the scale and complexities of conservation challenges that require working across jurisdictions,
agencies, and land ownership; (b) the desire to move beyond conflict to action; and (c) a recognition of
the relevance of practitioner, or experiential, knowledge as well as scientific and technical knowledge.
The literature on collaboration is extensive. Network governance, a more recent phenomenon, has
received less scholarly attention, though it is a subject of growing academic and conservation
practitioner interest. We do not intend to examine the spectrum of research in the fields of public
administration, political science, sociology, geography, and organization theory related to these topics.
Instead, our focus here is to highlight what is known about these three trends in relationship to
conservation actions and outcomes.
Conservation governance and management reveal a long evolution in governance structures, rule
sets, tools, and forums to enhance coordination across jurisdictions, resource managers, and resource
users.296 These governing forms have varied in their durability and effectiveness. But trends that now
reinforce the need for coordinated action are prompting what might be called an institutional
discovery process—new governance arrangements, both formal and informal, to enhance crossjurisdictional, public–private, and collaborative planning and decisionmaking.
Experience in successful institutional innovation is often one of incremental experimentation,
problem-solving, and sustained dialogue, often among multiple participants.297 Nobel laureate Elinor
Ostrom has reminded us that “complexity is not the same as chaos.”298 Through her empirical work on
managing common pool resources, she shows that the momentum for change often arises through the
creativity of those within a situation who strive to modify patterns of interaction to address resource
management problems. Such change also often requires a forward-looking reframing of the problem
statement to open the door for new management concepts and the incorporation of broader value sets
into decisionmaking. For example, over the past 100 years along the Colorado River, the problem
framework has gradually evolved from a focus on the development of water resources to a broadened
focus on sustainability.299 Increasingly, accompanying this evolution has been a reframing of decision
boundaries to extend beyond the river to ecosystems, a focus evident in the decision context of the
Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Plan.300
294
Steve Selin and Debbie Chavez, “Developing a Collaborative Model for Environmental Planning and Management,”
Environmental Management 19, no. 2: 190.
295
Matthew McKinney, Lynn Scarlett, and Daniel Kemmis, Large Landscape Conservation: A Strategic Framework for Policy and
Action (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, 2010).
296
We use the term “governance” rather than “government” to encompass the range of formal (government) rules and structures,
along with quasi-governmental and nonprofit institutions and decision rules through which decisions about resource management,
including water resources, are made.
297
Selin and Chavez, “Developing a Collaborative Model,” 4.
298
Elinor Ostrom, “Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems” (Nobel Prize lecture,
December 8, 2009, Stockholm University), 412, www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2009/ostrom-lecture.html.
299
Although “sustainability” is a broad term used for varying purposes and with varying definitions, for our purposes in this paper
in the context of water management, we use the term to refer to a decision framework in which decisionmakers seek to pursue
and maintain environmental, social, and economic outcomes that endure over time.
300
Robert W. Adler, Restoring Ecosystems: A Troubled Sense of Immensity (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2007).
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
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These institutional innovations continue to unfold in the United States and elsewhere. These
efforts range from relatively small-scale initiatives to more complex organizational partnerships that
involve large ecosystems.301
B-2e. Collaboration and Problem-Solving: Although collaboration has many definitions, we use the
term to refer to processes “in which autonomous or semi-autonomous actors interact through formal
and informal negotiation, jointly creating rules and structures governing their relationships and ways
to act or decide on the issues that brought them together; [these processes involve] shared norms and
mutually beneficial interactions.”302 As Ann Marie Thomson and colleagues note, the term is
multidimensional, including structural elements (governance and administration), social capital
(mutuality and norms), and agency (organizational autonomy).303 Much of the literature on
collaboration focuses on the set up and design of collaborative processes, but critical to their relevance
to conservation is how these processes result in decision rules to actually govern behavior and
relationships.304 The process-oriented focus of collaboration “infers that public involvement methods
must be tailored to the unique demands of the situation rather than using the same approach for all
issues.”305
Several scholars note that, although collaborative efforts are intended to result in shared actions
and outcomes, such efforts are not synonymous with setting consensus itself as a goal. Andranovich,
for example, suggests that conflict and cooperation are not at polar ends of a continuum; rather, they
coexist.306 The focus, thus, should be on “problem solving and dispute resolution rather than the
promotion of cooperative relations.”307
Other scholars reinforce the notion that collaboration and collaborative governance are not ends
in themselves but means of facilitating relationship-building and collective action in pursuit of shared
goals. Mark Imperial notes that:
Although collaboration can be an effective strategy for improving policy outcomes or
enhancing governance, it is important to remember that it is only one strategy and is unlikely
to be appropriate for all problems (e.g., zero sum games). Unilateral action, litigation,
legislative intervention, markets, and hierarchical control remain alternative strategies. Some
conflict can and should occur because it is an important component of a federal system that
promotes competition of ideas and stimulates policy change and learning.308
Collaboration is particularly relevant where there is a need for multijurisdictional leadership,
strategic planning, and resource mobilization and when “issues have broad political, social, and
economic implications; broad public participation is desired from the beginning; educating the public
301
Lynn Scarlett, Managing Water: Governance Innovations to Enhance Coordination (Issue Brief 12-04, Washington, DC: RFF,
2012).
302
Ann Marie Thomson, James L. Perry, and Theodore K. Miller, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Collaboration,” Journal of Public
Administration Research and Theory (December 1, 2007): 25.
303
Ibid.
304
Ibid.
305
Selin and Chavez, “Developing a Collaborative Model,” 4.
306
Greg Andranovich, “Achieving Consensus in Public Decision Making: Applying Interest-Based Problem Solving to the Challenges
of Intergovernmental Collaboration,” Journal of Applied Behavioral Science 31 (1995): 429–445
307
Ibid., 432.
308
Mark Imperial, “Using Collaboration as a Governance Strategy: Lessons from Six Watershed Management Programs,”
Administration & Society 37 (2005): 311.
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72
is desired; similar issues need to be processed in parallel tracks; and broad community consensus is a
desired outcome.”309
In the earlier discussion of norms, actions, and outcomes, we summarize research identifying
collaborative processes as important to trust-building. But conservation requires actions. Thus, a
critical question is the relationship between trust-building, motivation, and action. Ultimately, the
purpose of collaboration “is to generate desired outcomes together that could not be accomplished
separately.”310 Collaboration can be viewed as processes to enable joint action, described by SaintOnge and Armstrong as “a collection of cross-functional elements that come together to create the
potential for taking effective action” and serve “as the link between strategy and performance.”311
With this in mind, much of the literature on collaboration explores rule structures and processes
that build capacity for joint decisionmaking and actions.312 Collaborative efforts, as Thomson and
others note, are not self-executing; they require “coordinating communication, organizing and
disseminating information, and keeping partners alert to jointly determined rules made for governing
relationships (social coordination) …. A key challenge is to manage tensions between self and
collective interests.”313 Collaboration should not be mistaken for “forging commonalities from
differences.”314 Rather, it involves identifying shared interests and collectively developing actions to
address them, again a point illustrated in our case study on the Florida ecosystem services payment
program.
Although much of the literature on collaboration examines various rule structures and processes, a
central empirical question is what factors influence the determinants and outcomes of collaboration.
Foster and Meinard examine various variables, including organizational characteristics, environmental
pressures, and organizational attitudes, to better understand these factors.315
Others look at institutional design choices, particularly for practices pertaining to stages of
inclusion of various participants in collaboration efforts, to assess how to affect the outcomes of
collaborative processes in the context of health programs.316 Johnston and colleagues note that
collaborative processes embody “what procedural justice literature calls the ‘voice effect’: the strong
tendency for people to see processes as more legitimate if they have a reasonable opportunity to
influence them before a final decision is made.”317 Although “inclusion” is a fundamental tenet of
collaboration, these authors ask, should all relevant stakeholders “be included at once, or should there
be a slower method of inclusion, beginning with key agents and extending out slowly to all community
members?”318 They demonstrate:
… strong experimental evidence that a trade-off between inclusion and building shared
commitment exists. If all stakeholders are included all at once, for instance, it may be very
difficult to build the trust necessary for shared commitment to the process and to generate the
309
Andranovich, “Consensus in Public Decision Making,” 435.
Emerson et al., “Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance,” 14.
311
H. Saint-Onge and C. Armstrong, The Conductive Organization Building beyond Sustainability (New York: Elsevier, 2004), 19.
312
Thomson et al., “Conceptualizing and Measuring Collaboration.”
313
Ibid., 26.
314
Ibid., 42.
315
Mary K. Foster and Agnes G. Meinard, “A Regression Model Explaining Predisposition To Collaborate,” Nonprofit and Voluntary
Sector Quarterly 31 (2002): 550.
316
Erik W. Johnston, Darrin Hicks, Ning Nan, and Jennifer C. Auer, “Managing the Inclusion Process in Collaborative Governance,”
Journal of Public Administration Research 21 (2010): 699–721.
317
Ibid., 700.
318
Ibid.
310
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73
desired outcomes. On the other hand, if the inclusion process is too slow, resources may be
stretched thin, momentum may be lost, and legitimation problems may arise.319
They find serious consequences in balancing the tension between inclusion speed and process
commitment.
In another empirical assessment, Ansell and Gash examine the complex conditions necessary to
initiate and sustain collaboration. They undertake a meta-analysis of 137 cases of collaboration to
identify the critical variables that facilitate or discourage successful collaboration.320 These conditions
include an assessment of the prior history of working relationships, the incentives designed to
encourage stakeholder participation, power distributions, the availability of facilitative leadership, and
the institutional safeguards for including necessary stakeholders in an open and credible process.321
Ansell and Gash also look at processes for establishing trust, shared understanding of problems and
the values their solution engenders, and that create opportunities for participants to cultivate a shared
commitment to preserving the integrity of the process.322 Their model looks at relationships between
management practices, collaboration processes, and outcomes; it distinguishes design features from
collaborative processes and reveals trade-offs between the timing of inclusion and the strength of
trust and commitment to the process.323 With these findings, they suggest that the issue of inclusion
should be viewed not as a requirement to be obtained but, rather, as a process that must be
managed.324
Lab experiments on cooperation, for example, show cooperation early in the process, succeeded by
failure that often results from adding new participants.325 Therefore, determining how and when to
include participants in collaborative efforts may be critical to enhancing participants’ commitment to
the process.326
Whereas Gash and Ansell focus on stakeholder inclusion processes and their timing, others have
examined the structural properties of organization form and how they change and persist over time.
The durability of these collaborative organizational forms is important for conservation initiatives
because many conservation activities take a long time to produce results or require ongoing actions
over long periods of time. Imperial and Koontz, who define collaboration as a type of network
relationship,327 note that these collaborative organizations often are described as moving through four
states: a formative stage; development and maintenance of internal relationships; institutionalization
of organization procedures and structures; and, finally, a “shift toward domain or boundary expansion
by expanding on organization goals, strategies, or processes.”328 The focus of their research is on the
structural properties of collaborative organizations and how they influence the ability of these efforts
to continue over time. They point to the potential relevance of mechanisms to provide for
319
Ibid.
C. Ansell and A. Gash, “Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 1
(2007): 543–571.
321
Johnston et al., “Managing the Inclusion Process.”
322
Ibid.
323
Ibid.
324
Ibid.
325
Ibid., 714 (referring to findings of Ansell and Gash, “Collaborative Governance”).
326
Johnston et al., “Managing the Inclusion Process.”
327
Mark Imperial and Tomas Koontz, “Evolution of Collaborative Organizations for Watershed Governance: Structural Properties,
Life-Cycles, and Factors Contributing to the Longevity of Watershed Partnerships” (paper presented at 29th annual Association for
Public Policy Analysis and Management research conference, November 8–10, 2007, Washington, DC), 4.
328
Ibid., 7–8.
320
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accountability and institutionalized rules, routines, and procedures as potentially contributing to the
durability of collaborative efforts.
Empirical assessments of how different attributes of collaborative governance affect outcomes are
relatively scarce.329 In one study, Nicolas Gutierrez and colleagues evaluate 130 collaboratively
managed fisheries across multiple nations with different types of ecosystems, resources, and
fisheries.330 They review data from multiple sources and undertake a statistical evaluation of the
relationship between co-management attributes and successful fisheries.331 They find that success is
more strongly correlated with the number of governance attributes present than with community
attributes.332
Other studies have looked at collective decisionmaking processes—the substance of the resource
being managed, the processes through which participants interact, and the relationships among the
participants in the actual decision. Leong and colleagues examine how public-engagement processes
affect the framing of options for addressing resource management challenges.333 They look at several
case studies involving National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) decisions in which collaborative
processes were used to identify management alternatives. In each of these cases, the resulting
management alternatives led to options that extended beyond the agency’s jurisdictional boundaries
to include a broader tableau. The options:
… included a co-managerial aspect that would have been outside the jurisdiction of the
agency—the agency could not have developed that alternative on its own. In one case, the
agency was planning a visitor facility and had identified a number of sites, all on agency
property. A neighboring municipality looking to revitalize the area was interested in the
economic benefits the facility could bring. [The collaborative group] identified two sites on
land owned by the municipality, but adjacent to agency land, and submitted these sites in the
NEPA comment phase. The agency included these sites in its final analysis and chose one as the
preferred alternative.334
In a second case regarding a recreation management plan, 17 local recreation groups with
different (sometimes competing) recreational interests organized into an outdoor recreation
association. The association identified a management alternative that met their needs while also
achieving agency goals and reducing development sprawl. Leong and her coauthors note that the
public-engagement process serves as a “discovery process” of identifying solutions that might
otherwise be overlooked.335 Moreover, the authors note that this sort of public engagement results in
“lasting engagements” among people, and “not just episodes” of action.336
B-2f. Network Governance: All of the collaborative processes described above represent what
Daniel Kemmis and Matthew McKinney refer to as forms of democracy.337 Nonetheless, we single out
what we call “network governance” for particular focus. Collaborative conservation, as referred to
earlier, applies to place-based processes of citizen engagement that can occur at many scales and with
329
Nicolas L. Gutierrez, Ray Hilborn, and Omar Defeo, “Leadership, Social Capital and Incentives Promote Successful Fisheries,”
Nature 470 (2010): 386–389.
330
Ibid.
331
Ibid.
332
Ibid.
333
Leong et al., “Moving Public Participation beyond Compliance,” 24.
334
Ibid., 30.
335
Ibid.
336
Ibid., 32.
337
Daniel Kemmis and Matthew McKinney, Collaboration and the Ecology of Democracy (Dayton, OH: Kettering Foundation, 2011).
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
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a broad or issue-specific focus. Network governance refers to a subset of such collaboration—a subset
specifically centered on the interactions of multiple governing nodes that can include public-sector
and private-sector participants.338 In such networks, participating organizations maintain control over
their own resources; however, they coordinate the uses of their resources.
The concept of network governance builds on ideas of polycentric governance developed by Elinor
Ostrom and others in the 1960s.339 Vincent Ostrom used the term “polycentric” to describe:
… many centers of decisionmaking that are formally independent of each other …. To the
extent that they take each other into account in competitive relationships, enter into various
contractual and cooperative undertakings or have recourse to central mechanisms to resolve
conflicts, the various political jurisdictions … may function in a coherent manner with
consistent and predictable patterns of interacting behavior. To the extent that this is so, they
may be said to function as a ‘system.’340
Petr Vymetal describes the many classifications of networks, which vary in organizational
structure as well as in process design.341 Regarding the accumulating examples of network
governance, Goldsmith and Eggers note, “[r]igid bureaucratic systems that operate with commandand-control procedures, narrow work restrictions, and inward-looking cultures and operational
models are particularly ill-suited to addressing problems that often transcend organizational
boundaries.”342 These systems, they suggest, are not well-suited to addressing management challenges
in which relevant knowledge is dispersed, the interests of multiple resource owners and users
intersect, and coordination among multiple legal authorities is required.
Others note that similar challenges of coordination among multiple institutions arise also in the
nonprofit sector. Lester Salamon has analyzed the structures and functioning of nonprofit
organizations. In describing current governance challenges, he notes that “what exists in most spheres
of policy is a dense mosaic of policy tools, many of them placing public agencies in complex,
interdependent relationships with a host of third-party partners.”343
Resource managers increasingly flag similar governance challenges as significant hurdles to
achieving effective, integrated natural resource management. But examining emergent models of
network governance requires some sense of the governance criteria against which one might evaluate
their effectiveness. McKinney and Kemmis indicate their significance in a natural resource
management context by noting that “formal legal and institutional boundaries delineate ownership
and management authority” but “they also act as dividers between disparate cultures, attitudes, goals,
and values.”344 Consequently, they continue, these divisions “can stymie efforts to address shared
challenges.”345 Relevant to understanding conservation actions, Margaret Wheatley and Deborah
Frieze argue that:
338
See Stephen Goldsmith and William Eggers, Governing by Network: The New Shape of the Public Sector (Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution Press, 2004), 7.
339
McGinnis, “Polycentric Governance.”
340
Ostrom et al., “Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas, 851.”
341
Petr Vymetal, “Networked Governance” (research plan of the Faculty of International Relations, University of Economics,
Prague, no date).
342
Ibid.
343
Lester Salamon, “The New Governance and the Tools of Public Action: An Introduction,” in The Tools of Government: A Guide to
the New Governance, ed. Lester Salamon (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3.
344
Kemmis and McKinney, Collaboration and the Ecology of Democracy, 45.
345
Ibid.
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
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The world does not change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships that
form among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s possible ….
We don’t need to convince large numbers of people to change; instead, we need to connect
with kindred spirits.346
For purposes of understanding conservation attitudes and the effectiveness of conservation
actions, McKinney and Kemmis identify several questions: (a) What challenges present themselves as
one moves up the geographic scale? (b) Is the practice of collaborative democracy limited in some way
by geographic scale and by the corresponding sense of place or of belonging? (c) How (if at all) does
collaborative democracy address the issue of mobilizing and engaging unaffiliated citizens? (d) What
kind of leadership skills are needed for collaborative democracy?347 Research on these questions is
limited. However, some research points to characteristics that appear to be necessary to sustain the
credibility, legitimacy, and effectiveness of network governance arrangements.
Four characteristics, in particular, are important to sustaining the structures, processes, and
networks through which agencies, communities, landowners, and resource users can set shared goals
and undertake shared conservation actions across jurisdictions, ownership boundaries, and common
pool resource contexts.348

First, governance—both formal and informal—must provide accountability and flexibility.
How can decisions and actions adjust to new circumstances? Adaptive management offers one
technical tool intended to enable managers to adjust actions based on the establishment of
clear goals, selection of management interventions, monitoring of those actions to assess their
achievement of the established goals, and making course corrections where needed. But the
policy context within which adaptive management is practiced often limits the ability to make
substantive course corrections. And there is a second conundrum: the public (and sometimes
legal) requisites of accountability for clear outcomes produce some tensions with the pursuit
of adaptability.

Second, governance must be characterized by inclusivity in collaboration, accompanied by
shared agreement on the processes and rules that will guide decisionmaking. Who is at the
decisionmaking table? In what capacity? How much consensus is enough? When can an idea
become a decision?

Third, governance must allow for ongoing learning, including ways to identify information
gaps, frame questions, and generate relevant knowledge. Relevant knowledge includes not
only scientific and technical knowledge, but also local and experiential knowledge that is tied
to the time, place, experience, and situation.

A final characteristic of successful network governance pertains to the broader policy context
in which regulations and other decision rules shape how well participants can coordinate
actions and strengthen connections. Do existing rules and authorities allow for and facilitate
coordination? Federal agency rules are often not well aligned with the facilitation of
partnerships, collaboration, and cross-jurisdictional actions. (Consider, for example, Federal
Advisory Committee Act provisions that limit spontaneous engagement by federal agencies in
certain kinds of collaborative endeavors; other policies that constrain uses of cooperative
346
Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze, “Using Emergence To Take Social Innovations to Scale,” Kettering Review 27, no. 2
(2009): 34.
347
Kemmis and McKinney, Collaboration and the Ecology of Democracy.
348
For a discussion of landscape-scale conservation and collaboration, see McKinney et al., Large Landscape Conservation.
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agreements; and even budgets, which are often formulated by agency rather than by resource
management and restoration initiative.)
Regarding this final characteristic (coordination), many researchers349 have looked at the
formation of network governing institutions and processes, but few have examined the ways in which
networks support the goals of the whole network.350 Saz-Carranza and Ospina turn to this issue,
examining the behavioral dimension of network governance and identifying the need to effectively
govern the tension between unity and distinctiveness of network participants as essential to network
performance, a need that they suggest requires “strategic action at the whole-network level.”351 They
study what they refer to as the network administrative organization, the mechanisms within a
network governing context that focus on “fostering of concerted decisionmaking and joint action
among autonomous entities with distinctive aspirations, operational goals, and organizational
characteristics.”352 They conclude that network administration organizations “are key players in
generating conditions for joint action by network members,” as one of their critical functions is to
manage the unity–diversity tension.353 They find that network administration organizations play three
key roles. These organizations (a) serve a “bridging” role, mediating and actively promoting member
interaction; (b) provide “framing work” that sets the stage for concerted action by creating the
foundations of appropriate behavior among network members; and (c) perform “capacitating work”
that includes strategic recruitment, training, and resource transfers.354
B-3. Integrating Science into Collaborative Action
Informing complex conservation decisions with scientific insights and information is relevant to
conservation attitudes, actions, and outcomes. Yet the interface of science, attitudes, and
decisionmaking presents challenges. It is useful to think of the interface of science and decisionmaking
as involving issues of how:

problem sets are defined and priorities developed;

relevant information is identified and generated;

the science and decisionmaking discussion is conducted;

information is used, tested, and augmented; and

decisions are adjusted as information evolves.
These are partly institutional and procedural questions, thus giving rise to the analytical–
deliberative (A–D) approach to integrating science and decisionmaking that is discussed below. These
questions involve considerations of how dialogues are initiated, structured, and sustained and how the
results of such discussions can be affirmed as public policy and formal management decisions. These
questions arise from recognizing that many resource management and other policy decisions involve
In the context of the private sector, see, for example, A. Shipilov, H. Greve, and T. Rowley, “When Do Interlocks Matter:
Institutional Logics and the Diffusion of Multiple Corporate Governance Practices,” Strategic Organization 11, no. 2: 156-179.
350
Angel Saz-Carranza and Sonia M. Ospina, “The Behavioral Dimension of Governing Interorganizational Goal-Directed Networks—
Managing the Unity–Diversity Tension,” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 21, no. 2 (2011): 327–365,
http://jpart.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/2/327.
351
Ibid., 327.
352
Ibid., 328.
353
Ibid.
354
Ibid.
349
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what Tijs van Maasakkers describes as distributional disputes.355 Many of these decisions involve
debates about the distribution of funds and other benefits, the development of regulatory standards,
allocation of liabilities, or the siting and design of facilities.356 To this list, one might also add that such
decisions involve debates about who uses natural resources and how and for what purposes they are
managed—questions that also may have significant distributional effects.
Thus, framing the problem and defining decision boundaries involves values, and such framing can
introduce significant policy issues. These concerns are not matters exclusively of technical and
scientific determination. Resource and other policy challenges do not present themselves in
predefined problem sets. Defining the scope and scale of the relevant problem set—the “compass” of a
decision—can raise both scientific and social questions:
Is the relevant boundary for accumulating and applying information regarding infrastructure
siting a backyard, a stream, a watershed, a continent, or a world? Through what processes
might appropriate boundaries for a problem set and decision focus be drawn? Answering
these questions demands scientific insights. But these are as much questions of human
communities, values, and social constructs as they are matters of scientific distinctions and
categories.357
This observation points to the relevance of public engagement with technical experts and
decisionmakers in framing environmental problems and defining decision boundaries. It suggests that
the metaphor for science and decisionmaking is not one of two separate realms linked only through a
handover of information. Rather, a more useful metaphor is one in which multiple participants engage
in shared identification of goals, mutual learning, and coproduction of relevant knowledge. Within this
mutual learning framework, the science and decisionmaking nexus is not simply about information
transfers, nor is that nexus simply about the translation of technical data into publicly accessible
terms.
Even when participants agree on a conservation problem, decisionmaking may stall when they try
to reach agreement on the best solution to that problem.358 A failure to reach agreement is especially
likely when there are competing decision authorities between and within levels of government and
when a wide range of stakeholder values and interests must—by law, administrative procedure, or
judicial fiat—be accommodated before a decision can be made.
Within this decision context, Beatrice Crona and John Parker describe two models of knowledge
transfer—what they call the engineering model and the socio-organizational model.359 The
engineering model essentially views knowledge transfer as one in which generators of knowledge and
users of knowledge operate in separate contexts, with the focus and findings of research determined
by the researcher and then communicated to others, including the public, stakeholders interested in
an issue, and other decisionmakers. The socio-organizational model emphasizes that knowledge and
its potential relevance to users emerges within a context of organizations and social settings through
355
Tijs van Maasakkers, “How Can Practitioners Analyze and Engage Science-Intensive Public Disputes?” (unpublished manuscript,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009), http://web.mit.edu/dusp/epp/music/pdf/tijstnopaper.pdf.
356
Ibid.
357
Lynn Scarlett, “Climate Change Effects: The Intersection of Science, Policy, and Resource Management in the USA,” Journal of
the North American Benthological Society 29, no. 3 (2010): 895.
358
Environmental decisionmaking at the larger watershed or ecosystem scale will be illustrated in this section with examples from
water resources decisionmaking.
359
Beatrice Crona and John Parker, “Network Determinants of Knowledge Utilization: Preliminary Lessons from Boundary
Organizations,” Science Communication 33, no. 4 (2011): 448–471.
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
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which issue framing occurs, goals are articulated, and options to address issues are developed. Others
refer to this model as an A–D approach to linking science and decisionmaking.360
Research on the sociology of science, cognition, and related fields has focused increasingly on
socio-organizational models in the context of decisionmaking on environmental issues. In part, this
focus arises from the recognition that many environmental problems are complex and involve the
intersection of scientific considerations with individual, community, and broad social values and
behaviors. For example, reflecting on US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service planning
practices in the 1990s, a forest service commentator notes that experts such as agency officials cannot
simply sum up available technical and scientific research to develop the “right” answers to forest
management questions.361 The commentator notes that policymaking is both complex and politically
wicked and that these are not the same qualities.362 Complexity refers to multiple, interconnected
ecosystem variables and often nonlinear processes relevant to understanding forest (or other
ecosystem and natural resources) dynamics. The politically wicked nature of many environmental
problems refers to the fundamental interplay of human values and behaviors with environmental
conditions such that decisions to manage or alter these conditions potentially involve priority-setting
and value trade-offs. These wicked problems “cannot be solved by any multi-step planning process
designed to ‘collect more data, build bigger models, and crunch more numbers … [expecting that]
surely the right answer would be forthcoming.’”363 Such efforts to collect more data, undertake fancier
analysis, and add more computing power “reflect a naïve hope that science can eliminate politics.”364
Given complexity and the science–values nexus, substantial empirical research validates the
importance of three attributes of effective linkage between science and decisionmaking—credibility,
relevance, and legitimacy.365 Credibility refers to the extent to which the science is perceived as
meeting technical standards; relevance refers to user perceptions of the appropriateness of the
science for addressing their information needs; and legitimacy relates to perceptions that the
processes for generating and using the information are procedurally fair. The importance of
credibility, relevance, and legitimacy has turned attention to the role of collaborative processes in
bringing together scientists, stakeholders, and decisionmakers. For example, Larry Susskind refers to
collaborative rational processes in which participants “engage with other members of a community to
jointly learn and work out how to generate improvements in the face of conflict, changing conditions,
and conflicting sources of information.”366
A 2012 review of research on the intersection between science and decisionmaking in the
environmental context describes a broad consensus on the need for ongoing interactions between
scientists and users of scientific information.367 Moreover, numerous studies support the proposition
that the effectiveness of such interactions depends on credibility, relevance, and legitimacy, as noted
above. Dietz suggests that A–D approaches for linking science and decisionmaking (such as the
360
Thomas Dietz, no title (PowerPoint presentation, no date).
Dave Iverson, “The Forest Service as a ‘Learning Challenges’ Organization,” Eco-Watch Dialogues, February 1999,
http://www.fs.fed.us/eco/eco-watch/cos_greenplans.html.
362
Ibid.
363
G. M. Allen and E. M. Gould, “Complexity, Wickedness, and Public Forests,” Journal of Forestry 84, no. 4 (1986): 22.
364
Iverson, “Forest Service as a ‘Learning Challenges’ Organization.”
365
D. W. Cash, W. C. Clark, F. Alcock, N. M. Dickson, N. Eckley, D. H. Guston, J. Jäger, and R. B. Mitchell, “Knowledge Systems for
Sustainable Development,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 100, no. 14 (2003): 8086–8091.
366
L. Susskind and J. L. Cruickshank, Beyond Impasse: Consensual Approaches to Resolving Public Disputes (New York: Basic Books,
1987), 369.
367
Kalle Matso, “Producing Science That Gets Used by Coastal Communities: What Funders Should Do To Link More Science with
Decisions” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of New Hampshire, December 2012), 14.
361
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boundary processes described earlier) contribute to perceptions of the legitimacy of decisions through
improved transparency. But Dietz also notes that such processes may also play a role in changing
attitudes and behavior and may facilitate collective action.368
However, the literature does not focus on how to operationalize these interactions or on whether
the details are significant.369 If ongoing interactions are important, what is known about the effective
structuring of such interactions?
A 2006 report of the National Research Council identifies six principles for programs attempting to
better link science and decisions. These include defining the problem with users, defining clear project
goals and accountability, using boundary-spanning organizations, placing work in a decision chain,
experimenting with and incentivizing innovation in program management, and ensuring continuity
and flexibility.370 Others have underscored the importance of engagement among scientists,
stakeholders, and decisionmakers early in the process to enhance the prospects that scientific
products will be perceived as relevant to stakeholder and decisionmaker needs and increase
perceptions of legitimacy. Significant empirical research affirms that early involvement of intended
users may correlate with a greater link between science and decisions after project completion.371
However, through an empirical review of four case studies, Kalle Matso illustrates that effective
structuring of these interactions is not simple to orchestrate. Matso notes that, despite an increased
emphasis on the need to link scientists more directly with decisionmakers in ongoing relationships
and processes, the scientific community has shown a general “failure to see design and
implementation of participatory processes as an explicit skill or discipline.”372 On the other hand,
political scientists, organization theorists, and others within the social sciences have focused on these
design considerations as they relate to collaborative processes and collective governance. Here we
describe some of the tools that link scientists with stakeholders and decisionmakers. Later in this
paper, we discuss some of the social science insights regarding the design characteristics of these
processes and governance structures.
B-4. Tools and Processes for Linking Science and Decisionmaking
Conservation and environmental management decisions increasingly occur within collaborative
decisionmaking processes. Public participation and collaboration are not new, but they are broadening
in extent, form, and purpose. In particular, natural resource management settings are evolving to
include processes that bring citizens together with scientists. Some analysts have described a need for
368
Thomas Dietz, no title (PowerPoint presentation, no date).
E. M. Rogers, “The Nature of Technology Transfer,” Science Communication 23, no. 3 (2002). Rogers points to the importance of
the agriculture extension model in calling out some ingredients of success, such as adequate funding; the importance of
relationships; and the role of boundary-spanning organizations between technical experts and users of information.
370
National Research Council, Linking Knowledge with Action for Sustainable Development: The Role of Program Management—
Summary of a Workshop. Report to the Roundtable of Science and Technology for Sustainability (Washington, DC: National
Academies Press, 2006).
371
See, for example, T. C. Beierle and J. Cayfor, 2002. Democracy in Practice: Public Participation in Environmental Decisions
(Washington, DC: RFF Press, 2002); Cash et al., “Knowledge Systems for Sustainable Development”; K. Jacobs, Connecting Science,
Policy and Decision Making: A Handbook for Researchers and Science Agencies (Silver Spring, MD: National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, Office of Global Programs, 2002), http://www.climas.arizona.edu/files/climas/pubs/jacobs-2002.pdf;
E. A. Dreelin and J. B. Rose, “Creating a Dialogue for Effective Collaborative Decision Making: A Case Study with Michigan
Stakeholders,” Journal of Great Lakes Research 34 (2008): 12–22. National Research Council, Informing Decisions in a Changing
Climate (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2009).
372
Kalle Matso, “Challenge of Integrating Natural and Social Sciences To Better Inform Decisions: A Novel Proposal Review
Process,” in Restoring Lands: Coordinating Science, Politics, and Action, ed. H. Karl, M. Flaxman, J. C. Vargas-Moreno, and P. L.
Scarlett (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer Publishing, 2012), 107.
369
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“boundary processes” to facilitate mutual learning and knowledge transfers. Others emphasize the
importance of boundary processes that are collaborative and iterative.
Many public policy and resource management questions are technical and complex, but also affect
a variety of communities, interests, and locations and involve trade-offs. What are the respective roles
of scientists, technical experts, and the public in addressing such questions? Complexity and
disagreements about what information is relevant or how to interpret it often lead to data and
analytical debates. Debates over “what is relevant or valid” have sometimes steered efforts away from
problem-solving and have deterred action.
To address these challenges and enhance linkages between scientists and decisionmakers, a
number of structures and processes have emerged, often referred to as analytic-deliberative (A-D)
processes, as contexts for collaborative learning among scientists, decisionmakers, and the public.373
Although such processes have no “ideal” form, as noted by Matso, several emerging decision
frameworks reflect the A–D approach to science and decisionmaking that links scientists,
stakeholders, and decisionmakers in ongoing dialogue and relationships. These include joint factfinding, collaborative values assessment, collaborative adaptive management, and computer-aided
dispute resolution processes. Many of these processes involve science–decisionmaking boundary
organizations.
These tools are all intended to bridge the conversation between those engaged in the policy
questions—“what goals are we pursuing” and “how can we fulfill them”—and those who have insights
regarding “what we know that might help us decide.” Consistent with an A–D approach to science and
decisionmaking, these tools involve ongoing discussion processes and not simply the assembly and
translation of information. The processes themselves are important to enhancing relevance,
credibility, and legitimacy—the key elements of effective science–decisionmaking interactions we
identified in our earlier discussion.
Some research—for example, on decisions to site hazardous facilities—shows that decision
sequence, setting, and the type of public engagement matter. If local authorities first select, say, a
landfill site and then present the public with scientific and engineering information on its suitability,
conflict, data disputes, and stalemate often ensue. If, instead, local authorities first describe a need—
say, for managing waste—along with desired features of a site, they are better able to engage
interested constituents in evaluating options, the relevant science, and engineering information.374
B-4a. Joint Fact-Finding: Joint fact-finding involves dialogue and mutual learning among scientists,
the public, and decisionmakers. Scientists, decisionmakers, and citizens collaborate in the scoping,
conduct, and employment of technical and scientific studies to improve decisionmaking.375 The central
purpose of joint fact-finding is to develop shared scoping of the problem set and a shared
understanding of relevant technical and scientific issues and to build a collective understanding of the
implications of known information for policy options and actions.376
373
Harvey Fineberg and Paul Stern, eds., Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society (Washington, DC:
National Academies Press, 1996).
374
Rodney Fort and Lynn Scarlett, Too Little, Too Late? Host-Community Benefits and Siting Solid Waste Facilities (Los Angeles:
Reason Foundation, 1993).
375
Larry Susskind and Herman Karl, “A Dialogue, Not a Diatribe: Effective Integration of Science and Policy through Joint Fact
Finding,” Environment 49, no. 1 (2007): 20–34.
376
Scott McCreary, John Gamman, and Bennett Brooks, “Refining and Testing Joint Fact-Finding for Environmental Dispute
Resolution: Ten Years of Success,” Conflict Resolution Quarterly 18, no. 4 (2001): 329–348.
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Joint fact-finding processes have been used to engage scientists, stakeholders, and decisionmakers
in numerous resource management contexts over the past two decades.377 For example, a process of
joint fact-finding was used to address water quality issues in the Tomales Bay in California, 40 miles
north of San Francisco. Sedimentation has reduced the size of the bay, which is impaired with mercury,
nutrients, and pathogens. The area has commercial oyster-growing activities, and in the 1990s, water
quality testing led to health advisories for water contact and fish consumption. Outbreaks of illness
presumed to be associated with water quality sparked local action and debates about what was
causing the poor water quality. Years of data disputes ensued, as different interests presented
different information about the potential causes of poor water quality. Eventually, to move beyond
these disputes, a joint fact-finding collaborative process was launched. The process was used to
identify what information was lacking and what was needed to better understand the causes of water
quality problems. That information became the basis for a collaboratively developed watershed plan
for the bay. In the case of Tomales Bay, a key challenge was one of debates over data and the analysis
of data to understand the water quality problem and its causes.
Other conservation and resource management contexts present different needs and challenges.
One is a context in which goals and/or priorities are unclear. The second involves contexts of
uncertainty about what management actions or options will provide the hoped-for results. Several
different boundary processes are described briefly below.
B-4b. Collaborative Values Assessment: Offshore oil and gas exploration presents risks of oil spills.
One central decisionmaking challenge is how to focus emergency responses in the case of such spills.
Such circumstances can involve numerous impacts and potential response options that exceed the
operational capacity to address them simultaneously. The selection of priorities and performance
measures at the strategic level affects tactics and actions. Collaborative values assessments have been
used to engage stakeholders in interactive processes with scientists to identify stakeholder values and
public concerns and to assess priorities. Collaborative values assessments link scientific information
about risks and resources with processes to assess public values and concerns.378
B-4c. Collaborative Adaptive Management: The US Department of the Interior Adaptive
Management Technical Guidance refers to adaptive management as involving the exploration of
“alternative ways to meet management objectives, predicting the outcomes of alternatives based on
the current state of knowledge, implementing one or more of these alternatives, monitoring to learn
about the impacts of management actions, and then using the results to update knowledge and adjust
management actions.” 379 The National Research Council has defined adaptive management as:
… a decision process that promotes flexible decisionmaking that can be adjusted in the face of
uncertainties as outcomes from management actions and other events become better
understood. Careful monitoring of these outcomes both advances scientific understanding and
377
Ibid.
Igor Linkov, F. Kyle Satterstrom, Gregory A. Kiker, Todd Bridges, Sally L. Benjamin, and David Belluck, “From Optimization to
Adaptation: Shifting Paradigms in Environmental Management and Their Application to Remedial Decisions,” Integrated
Environmental Assessment and Management 2, no. 1 (2006): 92–98; and I. Linkov et al., “From Comparative Risk Assessment to
Multi-criteria Decision Analysis and Adaptive Management: Recent Developments and Applications, Environment International 32
(year): 1072–1093.
379
B. K. Williams, R. C. Szaro, and C. D. Shapiro, Adaptive Management: The US Department of the Interior Technical Guide
(Washington, DC: Adaptive Management Working Group, US Department of the Interior, 2009), 4,
http://www.doi.gov/initiatives/AdaptiveManagement/TechGuide.pdf.
378
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helps adjust policies or operations as part of an iterative learning process … it is not a “trial
and error” process, but rather emphasizes learning while doing.380
Some researchers have examined the effectiveness of adaptive management in improving
conservation and resource management outcomes.381 The record, generally, has fallen short of
expectations.382 More recently, in part to address limitations identified in previous adaptive
management processes, some conservation and ecosystem restoration managers have used adaptive
management as a more collaborative, iterative process to engage scientists, stakeholders, and
decisionmakers. Such efforts are distinguished from joint fact-finding and collaborative values
assessments primarily in terms of their purposes. Joint fact-finding may occur in contexts in which a
general problem has already been defined, but disagreements about causation—and therefore
resolution—of the problem impede action. Collaborative values assessments may occur when multiple
stakeholder values exist, yet priority-setting is necessary, and scientific information may be relevant to
better understand risks and opportunities in order to effectively to address them. Collaborative
adaptive management is often relevant in situations involving an entire continuum of decisions that
include problem specification; priority-setting; option evaluation and selection within a dynamic,
complex context involving uncertainties; monitoring; and adjustments in actions based on mutual
learning.
Participants in the Platte River Recovery Implementation Plan, a basin-wide initiative that includes
federal and state agencies, local landowners, the agricultural community, and others, designed a
collaborative adaptive management plan to enhance knowledge in a context of stakeholder and
decisionmaker disagreements and scientific uncertainties while using the process itself to help set
goals, select action options, and develop new information on the effectiveness of actions. The initiating
focus of the Platte River Recovery Program is on the protection of four endangered species and
involves coordination of groundwater and surface water management and land management,
including water use to support agricultural production. A central element of the planning processes
includes development of a “depletion plan” to mitigate, offset, or prevent new depletion to the river’s
target flows. Participants disagree significantly regarding what the at-risk species need, in terms of
water management, for their protection.
To move beyond disagreements, the program uses a collaborative adaptive management
framework. Participants agree to certain goals and actions but then monitor and evaluate program
benefits based on emerging information. The process provides a way to transcend data disagreements
and move to action. In effect, the collaborative adaptive management approach frames conflicts “not as
a legal violation but as a divergence of interests and a competition of interests among parties. The goal
of the process is to find a way to meet the interests of the parties, rather than just to meet the needs of
the law …. The model recognizes that knowledge is always incomplete.”383
380
National Research Council, Adaptive Management for Water Resources Planning, National Academies Press, 2004: 13.
K. Lee, “Appraising Adaptive Management,” Conservation Ecology 3, no. 2 (1999): 3, http://www.consecol.org/vol3/iss2/art3;
and Larry Susskind, A. E. Camacho, and T. Schenk, “A Critical Assessment of Collaborative Adaptive Management in Practice,”
Journal of Applied Ecology 49 (2012): 47–51.
382 J. Walter Milon, Clyde F. Kiker, and Donna J. Lee, “Adaptive Ecosystem Management and the Florida Everglades: More Than
Trial-and-Error?” (updated working paper, initially published in Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics 29 (1997): 99–
107), 37.
383 Curt Brown, “Handling Confrontation: Negotiated Adaptive Management” (Working Paper 93-13, Conflict Resolution
Consortium, Boulder, Colorado, 1993, edited transcript of talk by Curt Brown for the Intractable Conflict/Constructive
Confrontation Project on April 10, 1993).
381
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But participants in the Platte River collaborative adaptive management process note challenges.
These include: (a) financial needs; (b) institutional difficulties, including diffusion of responsibilities
for implementing actions; (c) the need to devote resources to building trust, which can actually
illuminate areas of conflict; (d) difficulties in getting all parties involved before crisis stages; (e) the
presence of issues that serve as symbols for much larger issues that are hard to negotiate; (f) the
imperatives of constant adjustment in a context of expectations for “final solutions;” and (g) challenges
of motivating interest groups to be involved in quiet negotiation.384
B-4d. Analytical–Deliberative Processes385:Dispute resolution refers to well-established processes
of negotiation and bargaining as a means for making natural resources and environmental decisions.
Various processes, sometimes referred to collectively as ADR, environmental dispute resolution, or
collaborative problem-solving, have been endorsed and promoted by government agencies.386 A key
goal of these approaches is to identify alternatives that increase the benefits to all decision
participants—popularly characterized as “win–win” solutions—achieved through “integrative
bargaining” or interest-based bargaining.387
One noteworthy form of ADR is A–D processes that integrate computer simulation modeling into
dispute resolution as a method for group problem-solving. A–D processes help disputing parties
discover win–win agreements by communicating through a mutually developed and accepted
computer simulation model. Computer simulation refers to models, built and vetted by the parties to
the dispute, that are used to provide answers to “what-if” questions prior to taking action. That is, the
models are used to predict the conservation outcomes of different policy interventions (alternatives)
taken in a complex system.
Simulation modeling serves shared learning and helps chart a path to agreement. Blending models
and negotiation in A–D takes a particular form that has implications for the way models are
constructed and used. In brief:

Computer simulation models must represent system complexity in ways that might be useful
and credible for participants in a negotiation.

The computational algorithms in simulation model(s) must be transparent to the parties to the
negotiation and must admit to and report on model prediction uncertainty.

The A–D model incorporates, and is not supposed to replace, competing models of the same
phenomena.

Simulation models can be of high or low resolution and can be expensive and time consuming
to build or inexpensive to develop. Simulation models can also vary in terms of the level of
geographic scale and disciplinary integration. A–D models have only the level of detail needed
to gain model acceptance by the negotiating parties.
384
Ibid.
The text that follows draws heavily from Chapters 2, 3, and 10 previously published by Shabman and Stephenson in Converging
Waters, ed. L. Bourget (Alexandria, VA: Institute for Water Resources Press, 2011).
386
Council on Environmental Quality, “Collaboration in NEPA: A Handbook for Practitioners,” October 2007; Federal Interagency
Alternative Dispute Resolution Working Group Steering Committee, “Report for the President on the Use and Results of Alternative
Dispute Resolution in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government,” April 2007; Office of Management and Budget and Council
on Environmental Quality, “Memorandum on Environmental Conflict Resolution: Letter to Agency Secretaries/Administrators,”
November 2005.
387
Brad Spangler, “Integrative or Interest-Based Bargaining,” Beyond Intractability, June 2003,
http://www.beyondintractability.org/bi-essay/interest-based-bargaining.
385
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Because A–D decision participants rely on a common model (or models), these technical models
serve a role analogous to the single text negotiation tool from which decision participants can organize
their collective deliberations. Within an A–D process, models will be explicitly designed in conjunction
with the negotiation participants. First, the convener of the negotiation organizes the participants to
facilitate joint discussions based on the principles and practices described in the collaborative process
literature. The A–D modeling can then begin from an appreciation of the values, interests, and
analytical needs of the multiple participants to the negotiation.
A–D modeling does not assume technical knowledge and models provided by outside experts or
even agreement by experts on “the science.” A–D processes integrate the development of computerbased models of the natural resources system into the negotiation process and become a basis for
resolving disagreement over “the facts.” Indeed, A–D begins from the premise that decision
participants often have difficulty separating arguments about “what should be” from arguments about
“what is” and so the process is designed to organize negotiations to reach agreement on what is, and
then focus attention on what should be.388 The joint modeling process also provides a means to
examine the consequences of different data assumptions, disputed technical relationships, and
scientific and physical uncertainties.
Stakeholders come to an ADR process with their own interests; values regarding the preferred
state of the ecosystem; and particular analytical understandings of the current social, biological,
hydrologic, and economic conditions, the technical, political, and legal options for change, and the
consequences of alternatives. These initial interests, values, and analytical understandings, can all be
sources of dispute, but all can be addressed and potentially resolved by ADR methods.
Interest disputes arise when alternatives have unequal distributional effects, as is often the case.
For example, a proposed water supply project for one local community may reduce future water
supply development and community growth opportunities for a downstream community. Or interest
disputes may arise when an existing benefit (e.g., water for irrigation or navigation) is threatened by
the new emphasis on mimicking historic flow regimes on a river in the service of ecological restoration
or river recreation enhancement. The resolution of interest disputes can be achieved by identifying
alternatives that all participants believe make them better off. A–D increases the chances of finding
alternatives that have mutually beneficial outcomes and can identify and perhaps quantify stakeholder
losses that require compensation.
Value disputes arise from different opinions regarding the desirability of a given alternative, even
when interests are aligned. Water resource value disputes, for example, often center on the relative
importance of environmental conditions versus economic and social development goals.
Analytical disputes arise from conflicts over the data, theories, and models used to characterize
problems and solutions. Analytical disputes are the initial focus of an A–D process, given A–D’s
emphasis on shared simulation model building. The traditional approach to the resolution of analytical
disputes is to rely on technical experts. However, as the number of disciplines (and sub-disciplines)
388
Model development coordinated with the needs of the negotiation separates analytical–deliberative modeling processes from a
significant portion of the technical water resources modeling literature. It resists the tendency to let technical analysis proceed
with its own problem definitions, alternatives, and solutions. Science and technical analysis is critical to aid in the understanding of
biological, chemical, physical, and economic consequences of different alternatives; but this analysis must be responsive to the
needs of decision participants. Models and technical analysts should not presuppose what information participants need or dictate
(intentionally or unintentionally) the selection of alternatives. Models should be at the service of decisionmaking, not the means of
deciding. However, although models are explicitly designed in conjunction with stakeholder negotiations, the models also meet the
technical and professional standards of constructing a logically consistent and valid model.
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and “experts” have grown, differences among experts within and between disciplines have become
common. A–D processes help illuminate differences between expert judgments and the value
judgment implicit in differing expert approaches to a decision. Parties with a stake in an outcome may
not accept the technical arguments of government or other experts without some form of external
verification. Nevertheless, claims to have expertise and “sound science” on the side of an argument is
still an advantage in most deliberations.389
A–D processes directly address such analytical disputes. The collective development, ownership,
and use of common analytical simulation models provide decision participants a structure and forum
with which to identify and debate sources of analytical disputes. The joint modeling process also
provides a means to examine the consequences of different data assumptions, disputed technical
relationships, and scientific uncertainties.
An A–D process involves mutual learning. These processes result in learning of technical “facts,”
but also help illuminate the values, beliefs, and interests of affected parties. Ideally an A–D process
helps groups discover and create alternatives that may not have been imagined by any single
participant. The A–D process means that preferences for, and willingness to consider, different
alternatives changes as the simulation model describes the consequences of different alternatives.390
B-5. Boundary Organizations.
The focus on the intersection of scientific knowledge and decisionmaking has shifted from
perceiving such intersections in terms of linear transfers from knowledge producers to potential users
to emphasizing mutual learning, dialogue, feedback, and other iterative and ongoing relationships.
This shift has generated appeals for the creation of “boundary organizations” that create the context
for mutual learning and dialogue. Parker and Crona describe these organizations as facilitating
communication and collaboration between research and policy organizations.391 They describe these
organizations as sharing three features: first, “they provide opportunities and incentives for creating
and using boundary objects—conceptual models, classification systems, etc.; second, they involve
participation by policymakers and researchers; third, they exist at the frontier of science and policy
communities but are accountable to both.”392
However, relatively little empirical research has examined boundary organizations and their
effectiveness, including their effectiveness in contributing to adaptive resource governance.393 Crona
and Parker, drawing from research on knowledge utilization, boundary organizations, and stakeholder
theory, attempt to better understand these organizations and their effectiveness, including how
knowledge utilization is shaped by social interactions, sociopolitical environments, and power
relationships.394 They note that the extent of types of interactions between those generating scientific
information and those using it vary. Their research suggests that “policy makers with greater numbers
of contacts with academics participating in the bridging organization were more likely to utilize the
information, as were those who discussed bridging organization research with other policy
D. Tarlock, “Who Owns Science?” Penn State Environmental Law Review 135 (2002): 10.
Individual and group learning and shared experiences also can build social relationships between people. The development of
social capital among multiple and competing decision participants facilitates integrative bargaining.
391 John Parker and Beatrice Crona, “On Being All Things to All People: Boundary Organizations and the Contemporary
Research University,” Social Studies of Science 42 (2012): 264.
392 Ibid.
393 Beatrice J. Crona and John Parker, “Learning in Support of Governance: Theories, Methods and a Framework To Assess
How Bridging Organizations Contribute to Adaptive Resource Governance,” Ecology and Society 17, no. 1 (2012): 32.
394
Ibid.
389
390
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makers.”395 Crona and Parker find that boundary management involves coordinating relations among
stakeholders and adjusting the social composition, structure, and research focus of the organization;
conclude that “boundary management should not be viewed as an achievement but as an ongoing
process of negotiations between the org and its stakeholders.”396 They suggest that effective boundary
management must meet the demands of specific stakeholders, often in circumstances where the issues
and relevant knowledge are complex and tensions exist. Identifying these tensions, they conclude, is a
key part of effective boundary management.397
Part Two—(II: B) Collective Settings: Summary of Key Findings

Conservation, like a growing number of public-sector activities, “entails producing services
with the public more than delivering services to the public.”398

Governing networks and co-management of common pool resources can (a) enhance
legitimacy, (b) create and utilize the social capital of local knowledge of local conditions, (c)
tailor responses to local conditions, and (d) offer flexibility in the context of changing
conditions.399

The trend toward public-engagement approaches to natural resource management and
decisionmaking reflects “the increasing complexity and ‘wickedness’ of wildlife management
problems …. Negotiation over the way the problem is defined … plays an important role in
identifying potential solutions and determining the relative success of management
interventions.”400

Collaborative processes can influence norms and actions, build trust, and enhance perceptions
of legitimacy of information and actions.

People see processes as more legitimate if they have had an opportunity to influence them
before final decisions are made.

There are trade-offs between the timing of broad inclusion of stakeholders and stakeholder
commitment to collaborative processes.

Early and ongoing interactions between scientists and users of scientific information improve
the effectiveness of such interactions.

Public-input approaches may be most useful in addressing complex problems and
communities of interest, whereas public-engagement approaches may be more valuable for
“wicked” problems that affect communities of place.

Four factors influence individual trust: (a) a general willingness to take risks, (b) responses to
betrayal, (c) a sense of altruism, and (d) an assessment of the likelihood that others in a
particular setting will act in a trustworthy fashion. Whereas the first three elements are
relatively stable personal attributes, the fourth is subject to change and can be altered “quite
readily by evidence.”401
395
Ibid.
Ibid.
397
Ibid.
398
Thomas, Citizen, Customer, Partner, 86.
399
McGinnis, “Polycentric Governance.”
400
Leong et al., “Overcoming Jurisdictional Boundaries,” 235.
401
Henry and Dietz, “Information, Networks, and the Complexity of Trust,” 192.
396
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
Momentum for change often arises through the creativity of those within a situation who strive
to modify patterns of interaction to address resource management problems. Such change also
often requires a forward-looking reframing of the problem statement to open the door for new
management concepts and the incorporation of broader value sets into decisionmaking.

Collaborative and network governance—both formal and informal—must (a) provide
accountability and flexibility; (b) be characterized by inclusivity in collaboration, accompanied
by shared agreement on the processes and rules that will guide decisionmaking; (c) allow for
ongoing learning; and (d) attend to the broader policy context and ensure that existing rules
and authorities allow for and facilitate coordination.

Significant empirical research affirms that early involvement of intended users may correlate
with a greater linking of science to decisions after project completion. However, effectively
structuring these interactions is challenging, and there has been a general “failure to see
design and implementation of participatory processes as an explicit skill or discipline.”402

Relatively little empirical research has examined boundary organizations and their
effectiveness, including their effectiveness in contributing to adaptive resource governance.
III. Broad Social, Cultural, and Political Settings
Cultural and social insights relate to the knowledge flows, information agents, perceptions, and
values of broader publics. These matter because they describe shared or distinct languages,
motivations, and paradigms that frame cultural conversations about conservation. Here, it is
important to understand how different cultures frame conservation goals and interventions as a
means to better harness intrinsic motivations and barriers to conservation messages. It is also
important to experiment proactively with new ways to frame and communicate conservation goals.
Relevant social and behavioral science disciplines include political science, social psychology and
cognition, communications and marketing, and learning theory. Research on cultural cognition,
strategic communication, and organizational and social learning provides insights potentially relevant
to understanding how different cultural and social groups perceive and respond to concepts such as
climate change or resource efficiency and natural resource preservation more generally. These
responses affect behavior and willingness to participate in conservation endeavors. As has been
emphasized throughout this report, how information is presented and framed; how it is
communicated among “experts,” decisionmakers, and “publics”; and how different audiences filter or
process information based on presentation play a critical role in attitude formation and actions. When
it comes to critical natural resource challenges and significant investments in both community and
landscape conservation efforts around the globe, “communication can no longer remain a guessing
game.”403
A. The Policy Context—Insights from Economics
When hurdles to conservation arising from free riding, bargaining difficulties, and market barriers
to conservation cannot be overcome through community action and corporate responsibility, another
alternative is action through government—what we refer to here as the “policy context.” An obvious
way to promote conservation through public policy is to build support for conservation in the
402
403
Matso, “Integrating Natural and Social Sciences,” 107.
Nisbet, “Communicating Climate Change.”
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electorate, so that public officials give conservation prominence on their agendas. But even if that
support exists, barriers can impede its translation into policy action.
Moving beyond voting, economists have raised concerns about the processes governments use to
make specific policy determinations. Chief among these is the “capture theory,” suggesting that
policies will be biased toward concentrated interests rather than reflecting a choice taking all of the
public’s values into account. This may occur because concentrated interests have a greater ability to
organize and generate political support that facilitates legislators or regulators remaining in office.404
As an illustration, imagine a policy choice about whether to preserve a wetland, and assume
preservation is favored by a large majority of the public. Further suppose that preservation’s
proponents exceed opponents in number by 1 million, and that each voter would be willing to give up
$5 to protect the wetland (implying that the social value of preservation is $5 million). However,
suppose a small group of developers who oppose preservation are willing to pay $3 million to build on
the wetland. The developers will find it relatively easy to organize and lobby on behalf of development
because they are so few in number, whereas it will be much harder for the million conservationists to
organize and coordinate. Because the wetland is worth only $5 to any one individual, they may choose
to not get involved and free ride on the activism of others. Thus, it is not difficult to imagine the
developers winning, despite the fact that development creates a net economic loss of $2 million.
Even if the policy process can, in principle, give equal weight to all interests, say via dispassionate
cost–benefit analysis, measuring people’s preferences—particularly their preferences for public
goods—can be extremely difficult. In many conservation contexts, we cannot look to prices or
behavior to determine how much a natural resource is worth to people. One can imagine people
willing to spend tax dollars to ensure that areas like panda habitats or the Grand Canyon remain
pollution-free, or more specifically, that areas such as Prince William Sound in Alaska or the Gulf of
Mexico are protected from oil spills. However, in these cases, the people who value them may not leave
a trail of evidence as to how much they value them—for example, if they don’t actually visit these
places, they do not incur expenses to travel to those places that gives some indication of their
willingness to pay to enjoy those places.
If we want to incorporate these conservation values into public choices, it can be useful to
translate them into a willingness-to-pay number, but getting that number requires surveys. These
surveys, known as “contingent valuation” or “stated preference” surveys, require care in their
administration. Such surveys start from the premise that if people do not have to put their money
where their mouths are, what they say may not be connected to how much something is really worth
to them.405 This challenge leads to a number of difficulties where the estimates can vary significantly,
and potentially inconsistently, depending on how questions are framed.406
404
Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1965); George Stigler, “The Theory of Economic Regulation,” Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science 2 (1971): 3–21;
and Sam Peltzman, “Toward a More General Theory of Regulation,” Journal of Law and Economics 19 (1976): 211–240. The
approach spawned by these works assumes that policymakers are like other agents, with an interest in their own political standing.
405
For overviews of the methodological difficulties in applying these methods, see Raymond Kopp and V. Kerry Smith, eds., Valuing
Natural Assets: The Economics of Natural Resource Damage Assessment (Washington, DC: RFF Press, 1995); and Richard Carson
and W. Michael Hanemann, “Contingent Valuation,” in Handbook of Environmental Economics no. 2, ed. K.-G. Mäler and J. R.
Vincent (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005), 821–936.
406
See also Shogren and Taylor, “On Behavioral–Environmental Economics,” 29–30 (see note 176 and the text accompanying that
note).
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B. Communication and Social Marketing
“We live in an age characterized by attempts at mass persuasion.”407
Based on 2007 statistics on daily individual advertising exposure (about 5,000 ad messages per
day), the average American will be exposed to 14 million advertisements in his or her lifetime.408
Given that 30 years ago, Americans took in around 2,000 ad messages per day, future exposure is
likely to be even greater. In 2010, the 12 biggest spenders on advertising spent between $1.9 and $3.3
billion dollars each on ads, and that is during a recession. Collectively, companies in the United States
devoted more than $130 billion to marketing in 2010.409 But what percentage of the current marketing
space is aimed at social and/or environmental benefits versus purely commercial marketing? Because
the percentage is so small, it is difficult to find in-depth analyses of such advertising.
Based on estimates from the Federal Procurement Data System, the federal government spent less
than $1 billion on “advertising” in FY 2010 and less than $750 million in FY 2011, but estimating
government advertising expenditures is complicated by the absence of an agreed-upon definition by
agencies of what constitutes advertising.410 These expenditures go toward advertising job openings,
military recruitment, competition for government contracts, and the sale of surplus government
property in addition to promoting social services and public health messaging. The 2012
Congressional Research Service report, Advertising by the Federal Government,411 does not provide any
details on environment-specific messaging.
The Ad Council is the largest producer of public service announcements (PSAs)—messages that
have the objective of raising awareness or changing “behaviors and attitudes on a social issue.”412
Leading national advertising agencies donate pro-bono time to help design and plan PSA campaigns,
and government agencies and nonprofit organizations sponsor production and distribution costs.
Currently, the media donates approximately $1.8 billion annually in print and airtime for PSAs. Again,
no breakdown of environment-specific campaigns is available, but one simple observation is that
investments in social marketing of environmental issues represent an extremely small percentage of
overall marketing expenditures.
The entire annual operating budget of the nonprofit environmental organization, Natural
Resources Defense Council (labeled “the most effective lobbying and litigating group on environmental
issues” by The Wall Street Journal) is just over $100 million, and less than 10 percent of that amount is
spent on “fundraising and member development”413 that involves public outreach and marketing. Not
only are financial resources for environmental marketing limited, but communicating and facilitating
uptake of scientific information is difficult given that just 20 percent of US citizens are “scientifically
literate,” defined by the ability to read and understand science news in The New York Times.414
407
Aronson, Social Animal, 48.
Louise Story, “Anywhere That the Eye Can See, It’s Likely To See an Ad,” The New York Times, January 15, 2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/15/business/media/15everywhere.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
409
Kim Bhasin, “The 12 Companies That Spend the Most on Advertising,” Business Insider, June 22, 2011,
http://www.businessinsider.com/companies-that-spend-the-most-on-advertising-2011-6?op=1.
410
Kevin Kozar, Advertising by the Federal Government: An Overview (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2012),
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R41681.pdf.
411
Ibid.
412
“Frequently Asked Questions,” The Ad Council, accessed June 25, 2013, http://www.adcouncil.org/About-Us/Frequently-AskedQuestions.
413
“About Us, See for Yourself,” Natural Resources Defense Council, accessed June 25, 2013, http://www.nrdc.org/about/.
414
D. Ding, E. Maibach, X. Zhao, C. Roser-Renouf, and A. Leiserowitz, “Support for Climate Policy and Societal Action Are Linked to
Perceptions about Scientific Agreement,” Nature Climate Change 1 (2011): 462–466.
408
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Similarly, a 2009 survey by the California Academy of Sciences found that “more than two-thirds of
Americans don’t clearly understand science or the scientific process, and fewer are able to pass even a
basic scientific literacy test.”415 Nonetheless, a growing body of research is available on how people
process and internalize information, methods to engage audiences (including on scientific or technical
topics), and how to address or circumvent belief in misinformation.
B-1. Selective Exposure and Trust in Information
Messages that are consistent with a person’s worldview are processed more fluently than
inconsistent messages. The proliferation of media and information sources has enabled people to
selectively seek out like-minded channels, shows, news sources, and blogs. The emergence of the
Internet, in particular, has facilitated an information landscape of echo chambers—news and opinion
sources that link primarily to sources with similar viewpoints. These “cyber ghettoes” have been
linked to the increasing polarization of political discourse.416 When people are exposed to arguments
that challenge their beliefs, they may actively avoid those arguments, particularly if they begin to
create doubt. “Thus, the very people you most want to convince, and whose opinions might be the
most susceptible to change, are the ones least likely to continue to expose themselves to a
communication designed for that purpose.”417
One critical element in such communications is the perceived credibility of the communicator. The
opinions of trusted sources provide a shortcut for making judgments about complex issues. Messages
from unknown or untrusted communicators, on the other hand, can be more easily dismissed. This
raises the question of how to generate or facilitate trust. As Henry and Dietz point out, “[m]ost
research on trust concerns trust in actions, whereas many sustainability challenges also involve trust
in information.”418
Individual perceptions of environmental and technological risk are strongly influenced by trust
in the institutions and organizations that manage that risk …. But most citizens have little
direct interactions with [these] organizations …. As a result, they must establish their level of
trust based on other cues and indirect sources of information such as the media where the
troubled dynamics of trust in information comes into play. This makes trust in abstract groups
something that can be manipulated ….419
Many social or environmental regulations (e.g., bans on DDT, smoking, emissions of nitrogen
oxides and sulfur oxides that cause acid rain, and ozone-depleting substances) have overcome
opposition and information campaigns arguing that the science wasn’t settled, albeit often after
protracted and expensive battles.420 Policy discussions and public communications on climate change
remain entrenched in the same discourse, with opposition being led and funded by many of the same
groups that resisted earlier public health and environmental regulations.421 One approach that has
been used to misconstrue scientific consensus is to take advantage of the media tendency to portray
perspectives using a “balance frame,” even when one viewpoint might lack credibility or represent a
fringe opinion. Research has shown that mass media make certain issues and concepts readily
415
Andrew Hoffman, “Climate Science as Culture War,” Stanford Social Innovation Review 19 (2012).
Lewandowsky et al., “Misinformation and Its Correction.”
417
Aronson, Social Animal, 86.
418
Henry and Dietz, “Information, Networks, and the Complexity of Trust,” 191.
419
Ibid., 199.
420
Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco
Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2010).
421
Ibid.
416
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accessible (and give little or no coverage to others), thereby setting the public’s political and social
agenda.422 Charlton McIlwain studied the quadrupling of media coverage and emphasis on
immigration in 2005 over the 2000–2004 baseline and established a clear link between media
influence and public priorities and, in turn, passage of legislation.423 McIlwain describes this cyclical
process as rhetoric, framing the public agenda, and framing the policy agenda, or the “three Ps” –
press, public, and politicians.
Several studies have shown that how well informed the public is on any given issue varies
dramatically based on the preferred news type or source.424 In some cases, it is not the source of the
news that matters, but simply the familiarity or repetition of a message that can create perceived
social consensus. In a 2007 study, Kimberlee Weaver and colleagues exposed participants to multiple
versions of the same statement from the same source. When the participants were later asked to
estimate how widely shared the stated belief was, they estimated greater consensus the more often
they had read the identical statement from the same source.425 “In a very real sense, a single repetitive
voice can sound like a chorus.”426 Strong adherence to misinformation can be more problematic than
lack of knowledge; when individuals do not feel knowledgeable about a topic, they typically fall back
on heuristics and often lack conviction, whereas beliefs based on misinformation can be strongly held
and possibly infectious within a network.
B-2. Challenging Misinformation
Stories people recognize as fiction can cause illusory beliefs of prior knowledge. For example, in a
2003 study, participants were given a set of clearly fictitious stories to read. The researchers showed
that when participants later responded to a series of quiz questions, they relied on misinformation
from the stories, despite the fact that it contradicted common knowledge. The respondents were
aware that their answers were based on information from the stories, but reading the stories had
subconsciously caused many to believe they had previously acquired similar knowledge.427 Related to
this, public awareness of politically motivated misinformation does not prevent such misinformation
from creating widespread confusion, as many people are unable to differentiate “false” from “true.” It
is difficult to build widespread awareness about misinformation and demand for change when
government agents withhold or misrepresent scientific findings and special interests fund research
with results favorable to their interests. For instance, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration’s Inspector General found that in 2007 the agency’s Office of Public Affairs
intentionally reduced, marginalized, or mischaracterized climate change science released to the
422
Aronson, Social Animal.
Charles McIlwain and Stephen Caliendo, Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in US Political Campaigns (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2011).
424
Farleigh Dickinson University PublicMind Poll, “What You Know Depends on What You Watch: Current Events Knowledge across
Popular News Sources,” news release, May 3, 2012, http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed/; Farleigh Dickinson University
PublicMind Poll, “Some News Leaves People Knowing Less,” news release, November, 21, 2011,
http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/; J. Curran, S. Iyengar, A. Brink Lund, I. Salovaara-Moring, “Media System, Public
Knowledge, and Democracy: A Comparative Study,” European Journal of Communication 24, no. 1 (2009): 5–26; and S. Kull, C.
Ramsay, A. Stephens, S. Weber, E. Lewis, and J. Hadfield, Americans on Iraq: Three Years On (Washington, DC: Program on
International Policy Attitudes; Menlo Park, CA: Knowledge Networks, 2006).
425
Lewandowsky et al., “Misinformation and Its Correction,” (referencing Weaver et al. 2007).
426
Ibid., 113.
427
Lewandowsky et al., “Misinformation and Its Correction,” (referencing Marsh, Meade, and Roediger 2003).
423
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general public,428 but such findings have not received nearly as much media attention as the
provocative “ClimateGate” event.429 Within this context, it is important to understand the cognitive
variables that can make information “stick.”
One such variable is the power of a good story. The content of a message is often more memorable
than its source, and an engaging story sticks in people’s minds long after the source (even an
untrustworthy source) has been forgotten. In addition, as people process a story and judge coherence,
they give advantage to material that is easy to process. “People assess the logical compatibility of the
information with other facts and beliefs. Once a new piece of knowledge-consistent information has
been accepted, it is highly resistant to change, and the more so the larger the compatible knowledge
base is.”430 The increasingly fractured media and message landscape has a tendency to reinforce
particular worldviews, with implications for the retention of misinformation.
Attempts to de-bias or correct misinformation are much more difficult if the new message
challenges the audience’s worldview. These messages can backfire and cause people to adhere more
tightly to worldview-consistent information. In these cases, one observes a motivated skepticism in
which people accept worldview-consistent arguments but are highly skeptical of opposing
information. “Munro (2010) has shown that exposure to belief-threatening scientific evidence can lead
people to discount the scientific method itself: people would rather believe that an issue cannot be
resolved scientifically, thus discounting the evidence, than accept scientific evidence in opposition to
their beliefs.”431 The same has been found for risk perception or “cultural cognition of risk.”
One approach to challenging misinformation and other information errors is the use of retractions.
However, retractions can be ineffective in fighting misinformation. One problem is that retractions
often involve the restatement of the misinformation, which can continue to reinforce the
misinformation “even when people acknowledge and demonstrably remember the retraction.”432
“Myth busters” research has found that by repeating a false statement in an effort to refute it, the false
belief can be reinforced because the repetition increases the familiarity of the misinformation.433
Moreover, social psychology research also shows that the less informed the audience, the more likely
that presenting opposing aspects of an argument will confuse them.434
Researchers have identified three strategies that can increase the effectiveness of countering
misinformation: (a) “warnings” that coincide with exposure to misinformation (b) repetition of a
retraction or correction without repeating the misinformation, and (c) corrections that tell an
alternative story that can fill the “coherence gap” otherwise left when a belief is called into question.435
All of these can be difficult to implement in practice. For example, the first strategy requires an upfront
warning that the information about to be presented may be misleading, paired with an explanation
about the ongoing effects of misinformation (it is not enough to merely mention that misinformation
may be present). Such an approach can be useful for deliberative bodies. Warnings can be effective
428
National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Inspector General, “NASA OIG: Investigative Summary Regarding
Allegations that NASA Suppressed Climate Change Science and Denied Media Access to Dr. James E. Hansen,” SpaceRef, June 2,
2008, http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=28174.
429
Jason Linkins, “‘Climategate’ Debunking Gets Less Coverage Than Original Trumped-Up Scandal,” Huffington Post Media, July 12,
2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/12/climategate-debunking-get_n_642980.html.
430
Lewandowsky et al., “Misinformation and Its Correction,” 112.
431
Lewandowsky et al., “Misinformation and Its Correction,” 119, (referencing Munro 2010).
432
Ibid., 114.
433
Maibach et al., “Communication and Marketing.”
434
Aronson, Social Animal.
435
Lewandowsky et al., “Misinformation and Its Correction.”
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because they can induce a state of skepticism, which stimulates more careful consideration and
analysis of new information. Priming people to be distrustful also enhances creativity in certain
circumstances.436 Repeated retractions and alternative explanations (leaving out the original
misinformation) is often the least effective of the three strategies, as repetition of misinformation is
more strongly encoded than repetition of retractions. The last strategy—correction via delivery of an
alternative story—is the most effective. This approach requires the integration of a correction within a
story that conveys (a) information about the original source of information, (b) an explanation of why
the information is incorrect and why it was originally thought to be correct, and (c) an explanation of
motivations behind the incorrect report.437 Ideally, this is all done in a simple way because, as noted
earlier, simpler explanations are more likely to induce a shift away from misinformation. Complex
arguments and stories can cause people to fall back on existing beliefs.
B-3. Values and Risk Perceptions
Dan Kahan and colleagues define the cultural cognition of risk as “the tendency of individuals to
form risk perceptions that are congenial to their values,”438 which can lead to differing interpretations
of scientific information based on differing worldviews. “The cultural cognition thesis predicts that
individuals will more readily recall instances of experts taking the position that is consistent with their
cultural predisposition than ones taking positions inconsistent with it .… [As] a result, information
sources who share their worldviews will be overrepresented in individuals’ mental inventories of
experts.”439 In a 2010 study, Kahan and colleagues measured subjects’ cultural values and used the
results to characterize their worldviews along two dimensions—primarily hierarchical and
individualistic (HI) versus egalitarian and communitarian (EC)—and then examined how these
worldviews influenced the interpretation of “expert” opinions on climate change, nuclear power, and
gun control. Some researchers have found this “worldview” approach to be empirically and
conceptually problematic,440 but, nonetheless, such studies have yielded some notable findings.
Subjects first read a series of risk-related statements on each of the issues; they were then asked
about their perceptions of the scientific consensus around the issues. Subjects identified as “EC” were
respectively 57 percent and 59 percent more likely to perceive that “most expert scientists agree” that
“global temperatures are increasing” and that “human activity is causing global warming.”441 The
results for nuclear waste disposal maintained the pattern but were far less dramatic, which the
authors attributed to the relatively infrequent political discourse on the topic in recent years.
The subjects were then presented with information about a number of fictional authors and
excerpts from their books on the risks of climate change, nuclear power generation, and laws
permitting citizens to carry concealed handguns in public. Each of the “experts” argued that the issues
presented either a “high” or “low” risk to society, and these positions enabled the subjects to deduce
their worldviews, which, in turn, dramatically affected the groups’ perception of the experts’
trustworthiness. The largest disparity arose around the climate change issue. The researchers found
that 88 percent of ECs but only 23 percent of HIs indicated that the depicted author was “trustworthy
and knowledgeable” (slightly, moderately, or strongly) when supporting a “high-risk” position. This
reversed to 86 percent agreement among HIs that the author was an expert when supporting the “low436
Ibid.
Ibid.
438
D. Kahan, H. Jenkins-Smith, and D. Braman, “Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus,” Journal of Risk Research 14 (2011): 147.
439
Ibid., 148.
440
Stern, “Human–Environment Interactions.”
441
Kahan et al., “Cultural Cognition,” 159.
437
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risk” position, whereas the proportion of ECs who saw this author as a trustworthy expert dropped to
47 percent.442 To overcome the effect of worldviews, the authors emphasize that “communicators
must attend to the cultural meaning as well as the scientific content of information.”443
B-4. Worldviews and De-biasing
The above findings on the processing of misinformation and risk perception lead to
recommendations for communicators attempting to better align expert and lay perceptions of risk.
Identity- or self-affirmation can be critical; that is, one should present new or corrective information in
a way that supports or is consistent with a conclusion that affirms the audience’s worldview. For
example, self-affirmation has been shown to better enable people with a strong personal connection to
a brand to process negative information about it (by separating their evaluation of the brand from
their own self-esteem).444 This observation underscores the need to tailor messages to specific
audiences. “By crafting messages to evoke narrative templates that are culturally congenial to target
audiences, risk communicators can help to assure that the content of the information they are
imparting receives considered attention across diverse cultural groups.”445
Even simple changes in wording can make the difference between audience members hearing a
message and remaining open, or shutting down. For example, during the earlier referenced
presentation at the Environmental Defense Fund’s 2012 Science Day, Drew Westen provided the
following juxtaposition of word choices on the same topics:

“Unemployed” vs. “People who’ve lost their jobs” (makes the message more personal and
relatable)

“Entitlement” (for many people this word activates negative thoughts on “handouts”) vs.
“Insurance we pay for through taxes” (easier for people to understand and accept)

“Global warming” vs. “Extreme weather” (focus on what people can see with their own eyes)

“Environmental justice” vs. “Justice” (this concept tends to be better received without a
qualifier)446
Westen also emphasized the need to create a sense of common purpose—a sense of “we.” Again,
he juxtaposed a number of generic terms often used in the environmental arena that can evoke a range
of mental images and responses with specific and relatable images that “bring the issue home,” so to
speak:

“Environment” vs. “The air we breathe and the water our children drink”

“Pollution” vs. “Pollution goes into our lungs and then into the environment”

“Cap-and-trade” vs. “Penalties on polluters and rewards for good corporate citizens” (The
majority of public approves of government stepping in to improve social services and stop
pollution)447
442
Ibid., 162.
Ibid., 169.
444
Kahan et al., “Cultural Cognition”; Lewandowsky et al., “Misinformation and Its Correction.”
445
Kahan et al., “Cultural Cognition,” 170.
446
Drew Westen, “Shaping and Activating Voters’ Neural Networks of Association” (presented at Environmental Defense Fund 2012
Science Day, New York, October 3, 2012).
447
Ibid.
443
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Messaging research also shows the utility of drawing attention to peers and experts who have
adopted positions seemingly incongruent with their community’s worldview—real or perceived (e.g.,
Christian coalitions to fight climate change). In one 2007 study, Kahan and his colleagues presented
subjects with information for and against mandatory human papillomavirus vaccinations.448 The initial
expert opinions aligned with generalized worldviews—HIs against and ECs for—causing a similar
polarization of subjects. But then the advocate arguments were reversed. When a hierarchical or
individualist expert defended mandatory vaccination against an egalitarian or communitarian who
opposed it (“unexpected alignment”), polarization shrank significantly.
Clearly the cultural identity of advocates is an incredibly powerful mechanism—one that rivals
the power that predispositions have on information processing …. When individuals see that
even some persons who hold their values are willing to take such a position—to “vouch” for
that position as acceptable for someone with their values to hold—they are less likely to form
the subconscious impression that taking such a view will estrange them from their peers.449
Another finding is that media communications that rely on seemingly innocuous forms of
engagement (e.g., using humor or stories that are not explicit attempts at influence) can have a more
significant cumulative impact than direct efforts at education and persuasion. Non-explicit attempts at
persuasion should “arouse little resistance, avoiding an inoculation effect and inhibiting the formation
of counterarguments by distracting the audience. Most important, people will probably see them”
instead of changing the channel or moving to the next article.450
If communication is direct, it may also be reasonable to engage in objective, non-emotional
arguments (“nonviolent communication”). Studies of argumentation and rebuttal in science education
have found that such types of communication often improve conceptual learning.451 However, the role
of emotion, racial or cultural differences, and social networks in processing of misinformation and
evaluating risk needs further examination.452
B-5. Emotions and Making Things Personal
Expanding the conversation beyond attempts to cultivate new beliefs or shift perceptions, some
basic rules of thumb for effective communication are often ignored, particularly by academic
researchers. To again quote Drew Westen, the most effective communications often evoke emotion
(“engage the gut and not just the head” and “if you don’t feel it don’t use it”); make interpersonal
connections (“helping people to identify with other people activates the frontal cortex,” the part of the
brain linked to behavior and problem-solving); and incorporate engaging visuals (“visual cues activate
emotional responses”).453
In one study, social psychologists worked with home auditors to develop an engaging visual
metaphor to get people to weather-proof their homes. Rather than simply pointing out cracks and
holes and recommending weather stripping and insulation, auditors told homeowners that “if all the
cracks around all the doors were added up, they would equal a hole the size of a basketball in your
living room wall. If you had a hole that size in your wall, wouldn’t you want to patch it up? That’s what
448
D. Kahan, D. Braman, P. Slovic, J. Gastil, and G. Cohen, “The Second National Risk and Culture Study: Making Sense of—and
Making Progress in—the American Culture War of Fact” (Yale Law School, Cultural Cognition Project, 2007).
449
Ibid., 12.
450
Aronson, Social Animal, 73.
451
Lewandowsky et al., “Misinformation and Its Correction.”
452 Ibid.
453
Westen, “Voters’ Neural Networks of Association.”
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weather stripping does.”454 Use of the vivid visual metaphor increased implementation rates from 15
to 61 percent.
In a June 2012 TED Talk “Talk nerdy to me,” Melissa Marshall, an outreach and communication
advisor for scientists and engineers, shared her advice on how to make science interesting and
engineering engaging, saying, “Science not communicated is science not done.”455 Marshall asserts that
when developing science communication, the first question to ask is “so what?”—how do scientific
findings relate to people’s lives and wellbeing? Avoid jargon (e.g., “spatial” and “temporal” versus
“space” and “time”), and liberally employ examples, stories, analogies, and visuals. Similarly, Drew
Westen outlines “principles of effective messaging,” emphasizing the importance of telling a “coherent,
memorable story,” using the example of climate change to illustrate the point:

Start by connecting on common ground (e.g., temperatures and weather change all the time
and always will);

raise concerns (e.g., the 10 hottest years on record have occurred in the past 20 years, and
2012 was the hottest of all); and then

end with hope (e.g., if we scale up currently available, cost-effective energy-saving
technologies, we could significantly reduce emissions).456
Westen also argues that environmental messaging benefits from identifying a range of messages
for advocates with a range of values for constituents and developing a set of “six-second pitches.” For
example:

Our greatest natural resource is American ingenuity.

Invest in clean energy and send money to Middle America and not just the Middle East.

We can drill our way to China but all we’ll see there are windmills.

If you have to burn it, it isn’t clean.

Which do you prefer—clean, safe fuels of the 21st century or dirty, harmful energy of the 19th
century? That’s our choice.457
B-6. Scaling Up Social Marketing
The consumer-oriented approach asks not “What is wrong with these people, why don’t they
understand?” but “What is wrong with us? What don’t we understand about our target
audience?”458
Systematic reviews of social marketing interventions have found that social marketing principles
can be “effective across a range of behaviors, with a range of target groups, in different settings, and
can influence policy and professional practice as well as individuals.”459 Although one complicating
aspect of social marketing is the lack of a commonly accepted definition, it generally has four key
454
Aronson, Social Animal, 73.
Melissa Marshall, “Talk Nerdy to Me” (TED talk, June 2012),
http://www.ted.com/talks/melissa_marshall_talk_nerdy_to_me.html.
456
Westen, “Voters’ Neural Networks of Association.”
457
Ibid.
458
M. Stead, R. Gordon, K. Angus, and L. McDermott, “A Systematic Review of Social Marketing Effectiveness,” Health Education
107, no. 2 (2007): 33, http://oro.open.ac.uk/20470/2/Ross_et_al.pdf.
459
Ibid., 2.
455
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features: (a) it focuses on voluntary behavior change, (b) it invokes the principle of “exchange” (there
is a clear benefit for the “customer” if change is to occur), (c) it uses commercial marketing strategies
and techniques, and (d) it seeks a social or an environmental benefit or goal.
A 2007 study reviewed the effectiveness of 54 social marketing interventions and applied
Andreasen’s filter of six social marketing benchmarks to generate recommendations: 460

have a specific behavior change goal,

use consumer research to inform the intervention,

consider different segmentation variables and target interventions,

demonstrate use of more than one element of the marketing mix,

consider what would motivate people to engage voluntarily with the intervention and offer
them something beneficial in return, and

consider the appeal of competing behaviors and use strategies that seek to minimize this
competition.
Standard types of advertising or other types of media communication are not generally considered
“social marketing.” The largest pool of social marketing applications have focused on public health
concerns, such as smoking cessation, alcohol and illicit drug use prevention, and condom use and
preventing sexually transmitted diseases. One criticism of social marketing with regard to
environmental behavior change, and specifically climate change mitigation, is that relevant
interventions to date have largely focused on narrow, small-scale behavior changes that may not add
up to a significant mitigation impact461 (though that criticism could be leveled at most climate
mitigation approaches to date).
Many successful social marketing campaigns share a number of characteristics: they recognize the
importance of extensive formative research; they are grounded in social cognition and social learning
theories; they use multiple communications and outreach channels and strategies; and they involve
monitoring, follow-up, and feedback.462
A few examples of both failed and successful interventions illustrate some of the challenges and
opportunities of social marketing. The UK government sponsored an “Act on CO2” campaign that
promoted the adoption of lifestyle-consistent individual environmental behaviors. One component of
the campaign was a TV advertisement, titled “Bedtime Stories,” depicting a child being read a scary
story about climate change that closed with a message that it is up to the viewer how the “story” of
climate change ultimately ends. This “scary story” approach was poorly received by many parents, so
it was pulled.463 Another piece of the Act on CO2 media campaign was a short film titled “Reflections,”
which emphasized that 40 percent of domestic emissions were linked to individual behaviors, and, in
particular, that private car use was the single largest source of emissions, paired with a suggestion that
viewers drive five fewer miles per week. Despite a significant capital investment, the campaign did not
employ social psychology and cognition insights, failed to achieve its aims, and was broadly criticized.
On the other hand, the Australian Department for Transport, Energy, and Infrastructure successfully
used social marketing techniques—in concert with other interventions—to change behavior with its
460
Stead et al., “Social Marketing Effectiveness,” 17–18 (quoting Andreasen 2002).
A. Corner and Alex Randall, “Selling Climate Change: The Limitations of Social Marketing as a Strategy for Climate Change Public
Engagement,” Global Environmental Change 21 (2011): 1005–1014.
462
Stead et al., “Social Marketing Effectiveness.”
463
Corner and Randall, “Selling Climate Change.”
461
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“Travelsmart” program, which aimed to reduce car use by a minimum of 10 percent in a suburban
community of 100,000 households. Letters and door-to-door communication were used to introduce
people to the program and solicit a commitment; personalized travel plans were developed that
provided information about public transportation routes, fares, and stops as well as free maps and
other “facilitative incentives;” and follow-up letters asked for feedback and offered assistance. This
initiative tailored its approach to its audience and achieved a 14 percent reduction in car use over an
18-month period.464
Several evaluations and critiques of social marketing argue that, to maximize impact, campaigns
should focus on building and supporting social capital and should work through existing social
networks rather than appealing to private individuals.
With respect to “bigger than self” environmental and conservation issues, many argue that social
marketing strategies should tap into “self-transcendent” values (i.e., benevolence, equality, and social
justice) rather than “self-enhancing” values (i.e., materialism and status).465 (We return to this
argument in Part Four, the climate change communications case study.) According to Crompton, for
example: “Unless [social marketing] techniques are employed in the service of values and frames that
are conducive to solving bigger than self problems … their long-term efficacy is questionable.”466 This
will require “deep framing”—building connections between communication strategies or public
policies and deeper values or principles. Social marketing “must be anchored in the deeper notions of
identity and citizenship if they are to have a meaningful influence on promoting a proportional
response … widespread adoption of ambitious behavioral changes and the widespread acceptance of
(or demand for) ambitious new policy interventions.”467 The most significant gains from social
marketing may be realized by targeting networks, civil society organizations, and other broadly
defined “communities.” And, as Corner and Randall argue, social marketing alone is insufficient; to be
truly effective, such social marketing must be integrated in multifaceted, multipronged approaches.468
Part Two: (III. A–B)—Broad Social, Cultural, and Political Settings: Summary of Key
Findings

“Capture theory” suggests that policies are often biased toward concentrated interests, rather
than reflecting a choice taking broad public values into account, because concentrated
interests often have a greater ability organize, lobby, and build political capital.

Measuring people’s preferences for public goods is often extremely difficult. Even if people
have a value for gorilla habitat or air quality in the Grand Canyon, for example, they may not
visit those places and incur travel expenses that provide an indication of their willingness to
pay to enjoy those places.

In a 2009 survey, the California Academy of Sciences found that “more than two-thirds of
Americans don’t clearly understand science or the scientific process, and fewer are able to pass
even a basic scientific literacy test.”469

The proliferation of media and information sources has enabled people to selectively seek out
like-minded channels, shows, news sources, and blogs. The emergence of the Internet, in
464
Ibid.
Ibid., 1010–1011.
466
Corner and Randall, “Selling Climate Change,” 1011 (quoting Crompton 2010).
467
Corner and Randall, “Selling Climate Change,” 1012.
468
Ibid.
469
Andrew Hoffman, “Climate Science as Culture War.”
465
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particular, has facilitated an information landscape of echo chambers, which has been linked to
the increasing polarization of political discourse.
470

Messages from unknown or untrusted sources are more easily dismissed.

Because most citizens have little direct interaction with the institutions or organizations that
manage risk, they establish risk perceptions based on other cues and indirect sources of
information, such as the media.

The content of a message is often more memorable than its source, and an engaging story can
stick in people’s minds, even if it comes from an untrustworthy source.

Attempts to de-bias or correct misinformation are much more difficult if the new message
challenges the audience’s worldview. These messages can cause people to adhere more tightly
to worldview-consistent information.

Three strategies can increase the effectiveness of countering misinformation: (a) “warnings”
that coincide with exposure to misinformation, (b) repetition of a retraction or correction
without repeating the misinformation, and (c) corrections that tell an alternative story that can
fill the “coherence gap” otherwise left when a belief is called into question. The last strategy is
the most effective.

Individuals are more likely to recall instances of experts taking positions that are consistent
with their cultural predisposition than ones taking positions inconsistent with it.

When presenting new or corrective information, it is often critical to do it in a way that
provides identity- or self-affirmation—that supports or is consistent with a conclusion that
affirms the audience’s worldview.

The cultural identity of advocates is a powerful mechanism. If individuals see that a “leader” or
public persona who holds their values takes a position outside the norm, they are less likely to
be predisposed against that position.

Systematic reviews of social marketing interventions have found that social marketing
principles can be “effective across a range of behaviors, with a range of target groups, in
different settings, and can influence policy and professional practice as well as individuals.”470

Many successful social marketing campaigns share a number of characteristics: they recognize
the importance of extensive formative research; they are grounded in social cognition and
social learning theories; they use multiple communications and outreach channels and
strategies; and they involve monitoring, follow-up, and feedback.

Social marketing campaigns should focus on building and supporting social capital and should
work through existing social networks rather than appealing to private individuals. The most
significant gains from social marketing may be realized by targeting networks, civil society
organizations, and other broadly defined “communities.”
Stead et al., “Social Marketing Effectiveness,” 2.
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Part Three: Case Example— Payment for Environmental Services on
Working Lands
This section provides a detailed discussion of the origins and structure of a new payment for
ecosystem services (PES) program in Florida. The objectives for this case example are to (a) describe
and illustrate the design features of market-like incentive program and (b) illustrate how the basic
principles of collaborative decisionmaking described above resulted in stakeholder agreement on the
implementation of the market-like program.
I. Framing the Issue
In January 2011, the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) issued the first
solicitation under its new Dispersed Water Management–Northern Everglades Payment for
Environmental Services (NE-PES) Program. The program has market-like features designed to
encourage private landowners—in this case cattle ranchers—to supply ecosystem services. The
program, which took many years to develop and implement, involved collaboration among a wide
variety of stakeholders.
Market-Like Program Fundamentals
Market-like programs combine decisionmaking flexibility with a financial incentive to reward
innovative individual conservation actions; actions that in turn lead to desired environmental
changes at larger scales (e.g., a watershed). Market-like programs involve the following
fundamental features. First, they identify environmental services valued by buyers willing and able
to pay for them. Second, because buyers want to purchase environmental results, not just
conservation practices, they define performance goals and evaluate conservation practices in
relation to those goals. Third, because they are designed to encourage innovation, they offer
participants discretion in the practices undertaken to meet a performance goal. Fourth, a marketlike program envisions mechanisms whereby buyers and sellers negotiate a price and then enter
into contracts governing the terms and conditions under which payments will be made; payments
are made after documentation of the quantity of the services produced.
The design process began with an ad hoc collaboration of ranchers and environmental groups,
which evolved into the multiyear (2005–2011) Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project
(FRESP).471 FRESP was a collaborative process that began with four (and grew to eight) volunteer
ranchers; staff experts from WWF and Resources for the Future (RFF); and representatives from the
SFWMD, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS), the Florida
Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation
Service (NRCS). A technical support team included a wide range of disciplinary experts from the
MacArthur Agro-Ecology Research Center and the University of Florida Institute of Food and
Agricultural Sciences. Funding in excess of $7 million was secured for designing the NE-PES program.
In the initial years, ad hoc collaborators, and later the FRESP team, agreed on broad PES program
principles meant to satisfy the different stakeholders and allow for an environmentally, socially, and
financially effective program. Next, the broad principles were refined and program concepts tested as
projects that could produce services were designed, permitted, constructed, and monitored on
portions of eight participating ranches.
471
Further details on the region and on the Florida Ranchlands Environmental Services Project (FRESP), project photos, and other
background materials can be found at www.fresp.org.
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This case report describes the key features of a market-like program and illustrates how
collaborative processes are needed and can lead to the acceptance and implementation of such a
program. The case offers lessons for others designing market-like conservation programs.
II. The Setting
The Northern Everglades begins south of Orlando and includes the Kissimmee River, Lake
Okeechobee, and adjacent coastal estuaries to the east and west (Figure 1). Beginning more than 100
years ago, public agencies and private landowners began to transform the land, building a vast ditch
network. Today, the hydrologic regime of the more than 5 million–acre northern watershed, which is
nearly flat with many seasonally flooded wetlands, is governed by hundreds of publicly managed flowcontrol structures and thousands of miles of canal and ditch networks on private land.
Figure 1. The Northern Everglades
This massive system drained the land, supported agricultural production, and, more recently, has
accommodated a significant increase in human settlement. Today the pasture area (including
improved and unimproved rangeland) is about 1 million acres. This pasture includes wetlands,
woodlands, and other land uses, such as citrus groves. Therefore, the total area that can be defined as
ranchland is more than 30 percent of the total watershed.
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The hydrologic modifications and land use changes fragmented wildlife habitat and accelerated
the movement of water and nutrients from working lands into marshes and lakes. The result has been
an increase of nutrient loads into Lake Okeechobee and more extreme—and undesirable—water level
fluctuations. When lake levels are high, nutrient-laden freshwater is pumped out of the lake through
canals to the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries, which are being harmed by the combination of
excess freshwater and high nutrient concentrations. Over recent decades, an array of regulations; best
management practice (BMP) cost-share programs; and public investments in regional reservoirs,
aquifer storage, and recovery wells and stormwater treatment areas have been put in place to mitigate
these adverse environmental changes.
It was against this backdrop that a disparate group of stakeholders came together, concluded that
a complementary market-like PES approach was desired, and made the NE-PES a reality. Market-like
program implementation requires thinking outside of existing policy frameworks and also requires
collaborative problem-solving to find common ground among agencies, landowners, and
environmental advocacy groups.
III. Converging Interests and the FRESP Process
The FRESP collaboration involved a primarily virtual (but at times physical) space where
participants made decisions by consensus, worked to understand the interests and constraints of
others, and trusted that all involved were committed to a PES program design that addressed all
concerns.
A. Different Stakeholders—A Shared Interest
In the early 2000s, a staff expert from WWF recognized that large ranches north of Lake
Okeechobee included extensive natural habitat for many common wildlife species, served as critical
wildlife movement corridors, and supported habitat for several federally threatened and endangered
species. These working ranchlands were mostly cow–calf operations that have a low per acre
discharge of phosphorus (P) relative to most other land uses. However, cow–calf production has thin
financial margins, and feeder cattle prices are volatile, as are prices for sod and citrus that is often
produced on these same ranches. The result was ongoing pressure to convert ranches to more
intensive agriculture or to urban development; such conversion would probably result in higher P
loads and further aggravate the adverse hydrologic effects of drainage. The recognition of habitat
values and limited water quality impacts led WWF staff and other Florida-based environmental
organizations to conclude that cattle ranching was a “preferred land use.”
In 2001, WWF began approaching ranchers with this understanding and found widespread
concern about the future of the industry among the ranchers themselves. However, that same ranch
community also believed that state regulatory agencies, abetted by “environmentalists,” were ignorant
of the pressures on the industry and had imposed or were likely to impose regulatory requirements
that would further discourage continued ranching. WFF staff identified a small number of ranchers
who were leaders in their community and began one-on-one conversations with those individuals. At
the same time, WWF reached out to representatives of state agencies and found receptivity to the
argument that cattle ranches were a preferred land use.
B. Building Trust and Finding Common Ground
A formal process was initiated when WWF and the six ranchers convened an ad hoc group to
identify opportunities for increasing the financial returns to ranchland owners, with the goal of
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“keeping ranchers ranching.” At that time, the PES concept was only one among many options
discussed for improving the financial position of the industry. It was that ad hoc process that identified
the possibility that a state or federal agency might pay cattle ranchers to change on-ranch water
management as a way to complement other restoration programs. Not only would the changed water
management help reverse the adverse effects of past hydrologic changes, but water retention was
widely recognized as the most effective way to reduce P pollution from land runoff.
In fact, cattle ranching demands active and sophisticated water management, so ranches in the
area had already made large investments in drainage infrastructure. What was needed, all agreed, was
an incentive program that would reward ranchers if they chose to retain the water as opposed to
discharging water to the drainage network. The group discussed and agreed that a switch from “drain
to retain” could be technologically accomplished with what the work group defined as water
management alternatives (WMAs). However, all also agreed that retaining water (especially allowing
some flooding of areas of pasture) might diminish pasture productivity, cattle production, and already
low cattle revenues. It was for this reason that water retention was an optional rather than required
BMP under the state regulatory programs then in place.
C. New Participants and the Basic Vision
The question then became: How could ranchers be motivated to retain water and, hence, also
reduce P load, above and beyond state regulatory requirements? For this reason, state agencies—
FDEP, FDACS, and SFWMD—were approached by WWF staff and engaged with the ad hoc group.
Indeed, state agency staff at SFWMD and FDACS had long understood that changes in the way water is
managed on private ranchlands could yield hydrologic restoration and water quality benefits.
However, the changes in water management had to allow for profitable cattle, sod, and citrus
production or offer compensation for lost profits.
The ranchers were not interested in selling their land so that more water could be retained. At the
same time, the agencies faced limited budgets and limited staff for land management that made them
willing to consider alternatives to land acquisition. The ranchers were interested in alternatives to
existing easement programs that restricted use of the land for agricultural production, took land out of
production, or prevented sale for development.
The preferred concept was to have agencies enter into time-limited contracts with ranchers who
would agree to provide water services in return for a payment. The agency staff expressed support for
such a program, but only if changes in P load reduction and water management were above and
beyond what was expected to result from the BMPs under the existing regulatory programs.
D. Building a Credible Analytical Case
As part of the ongoing dialogue, the underlying assumption was that the buyer of services would
be one of the state agencies—even though no commitment was made. However, the agencies clearly
stated that they would be willing to pay for the services only if on-ranch water management was a
cost-effective complement to the region’s large reservoir and stormwater treatment projects. Clearly,
the ranchers and the agencies needed a more certain analytical foundation for assessing the feasibility
and relative costs of on-ranch water retention. For this reason, the ad hoc group used funds from the
Kellogg Foundation to conduct a proof-of-concept study for a PES program. Staff experts from WWF
and RFF managed the study, and these individuals later became project directors for FRESP.
The analysis itself was completed by technical specialists who were trusted by all of the
stakeholders. A consulting engineer who had designed water management projects for the agencies as
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well as for ranchers was engaged to work with ranchers in the design of hypothetical WMAs for a
variety of ranch circumstances. The same contractor also estimated the effectiveness of on-ranch
water management in reducing P loads and changing runoff volume at the ranch scale. At the same
time, a nationally recognized ranch finance economist was employed to prepare-specific estimates of
payments that would allow ranchers to recover costs, including compensation for production risk.
Finally, the lead economist for the SFWMD worked with a well-regarded consulting firm to estimate
the incremental cost and effectiveness of large regional P load reduction and water storage projects
for comparison with on-ranch water management. Throughout the study, highly placed staff in FDEP,
FDACS, and SFWMD, as well as the ranchers, served as reviewers of the work and as sounding boards
for PES design ideas. As a result, when the final analysis concluded that on-ranch water management
could be cost-effective, the results were deemed credible and were accepted by all stakeholders.472
E. Identifying Barriers and Challenges
The assessment also identified a daunting list of program design challenges that would need to be
addressed—some typical of PES schemes in general, and some specific to the Florida situation. The
ranchers’ principal concerns were: (a) how potential adverse effects on ranch cattle production could
be recognized and compensated and (b) whether their land and water management practices could be
returned to pre-contract conditions when their contracts were over, even if implementation of the
WMA resulted in an increase in endangered species habitat or expanded wetland footprint on the
WMA site. The agencies expressed their understanding of these concerns and committed to addressing
them.
The agencies were adamant that they would not make payments unless the payment was a
demonstrably cost-effective use of public funds, and, as noted above, any payment had to be for
improvements above and beyond what would be secured under existing regulatory requirements. The
ranchers expressed their understanding of these agency interests.
The leaders of what would become FRESP from WWF and RFF made the argument that a marketlike system was the best way to meet the interests of both the agency-buyer and the rancher-seller.
The following market-like fundamentals became the foundation for the agreement to engage in FRESP
and work toward what became the NE-PES.
472

Environmental services are a commodity that can be produced on working ranches but, like
any commodity, will be produced only if the rancher-sellers realize an increase in ranch
profitability from sale of the services. Ranchers would be the ones to choose the level of
services to produce and how to produce them, in consideration of the effect on the returns
from other ranch enterprises and the expected profit.

A government agency might become a buyer of services but would have the discretion to
choose what ranches to buy from based on its own assessment of service potential offered by
competing sellers.

The agency-buyer and rancher-seller would enter into a limited term contract for the provision
of a service, defined in terms of an environmental outcome, not as the construction or
implementation of a conservation practice. Payments would be made only if rancher-sellers
provided documentation that such a service was provided.
The final report can be found at www.fresp.org.
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The need to address these design challenges demanded a process where representatives of the
rancher community, agencies of the state of Florida, and the environmental community could openly
discuss and come to agreement on each of the PES design elements. Further design and exploration
was to be completed through a collaborative effort that ultimately became FRESP.
IV. FRESP Is Created
The trust engendered by the ad hoc committee process led to successful grant applications.473 With
the funds in hand, FRESP became an active collaboration among Florida agencies, USDA, NRCS, WWF,
RFF, the MacArthur Agro-Ecology Research Center, the University of Florida and, most significantly,
ranchers. The FRESP collaboration was formally launched in 2005 after most of the relevant parties
signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreeing to work together to design a PES program.
What was understood by the signatories, although not explicit in the MOU, was that FRESP would
be an iterative process of dialogue, learning, and advocacy organized around designing, implementing,
and operating eight pilot projects.474 The pilots served as a laboratory for water management and
measurement technology development and testing; they also created the specific examples for
reaching a shared understanding about the interests of rancher-sellers and agency-buyers.
A. The FRESP Vision
By 2008, the FRESP collaboration developed a concise PES vision statement to accommodate and
reconcile the different interests in the collaboration and the agreement on market-like program design
principles. The vision was used in numerous presentations that were made to build support in the
Florida legislature and among the senior leadership in the Florida agencies.
Owners of working ranch lands, relying on modification to existing water management
structures and strategies, will enter into fixed term contracts to provide documented water
related environmental services, above and beyond regulatory requirements, creating a new
profit center for ranch enterprises.
Accompanying the vision was agreement on a market-like design for the program, even though
many details still needed to be resolved.
1. The agency-buyer would request proposals to retain water and/or P. The request would
specify all relevant contract details (e.g., eligibility requirements, documentation
requirements, method for estimating potential services, and contract exit and renegotiation
clauses).
2. Ranchers who were in compliance with existing water quality program requirements would be
eligible to submit a proposal to compete for available funding. The application packet would
include an assessment of their sites’ potential to provide the services and a requested up-front
and annual payment.
3. The agency-buyers would make a selection among applicants using criteria including, but not
limited to, an estimate of volume of water that could be retained and P retention potential
using tools provided by the agency, the requested level of payments, and the proposed ways in
which the service provision would be documented.
473
All partners signed on to a US Department of Agriculture Conservation Innovation Grant application, and the South Florida
Water Management District agreed to provide cash and in-kind cost share as required by the grant.
474
FRESP used a large portion of the funds to install water management alternatives on the ranches and to collect and manage
hydrologic and water quality data from each site.
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4. With a signed contract in hand, the rancher would implement any construction or other land
and water management actions needed to provide the services. At the time of construction,
documentation equipment would be put in place.
5. Payments would be made on an annual basis if documentation showed that the obligations
were met and services were provided.
6. At the end of the contract period, the WMA could be shut down according to rules specified in
the contract, or the contract could be renegotiated if both the agency and the ranchers agreed
to an extension.
B. Addressing the Design Challenges
Participants in the FRESP collaboration were able to agree on these program fundamentals.
Nonetheless, many design challenges remained to be resolved before the January 11, 2011, solicitation
could be issued.
Specify Eligible Sellers: The collaboration had to define which ranchers, with which ranchlands,
would be eligible to sell water retention and water quality improvement services. Three concerns had
to be addressed. First, WMAs would be implemented on parcels within a ranch with parcel boundaries
delineated by catchment area (an area where water drains by gravity or is pumped to an identifiable
outlet). Because many ranches are spread over several thousand acres, any ranch might include
several catchments where a WMA could be implemented. Within the catchments, current and past
land uses could vary across the ranch, with some areas being citrus land, other areas plated for sod
and vegetables, and others maintained as native and improved pasture and woodlands. The concern of
the partners was that retaining water on some lands might suspend, and then release, certain
agricultural chemicals used in sod, citrus, and vegetable production into state waters. Therefore, in
catchments with that land use history, soil chemical analysis tests would be required before lands
could be eligible for a WMA. However, such tests were expensive and often inconclusive. Therefore,
the partners decided that only pasture and wetland areas within a ranch dedicated to cow–calf (cattle)
production could offer environmental services, limiting the number of eligible parcels.
Second, collaboration participants agreed to a limitation based on geography. Specifically, with the
focus of concern on areas north of the lake (what has come to be called the Northern Everglades), only
certain ranchlands within the areas shown in Figure 1 would be eligible for payments to provide water
services.
Third, a key concern of the buyer and, by extension, the taxpayer, was that program applicants be
in compliance with all relevant regulatory requirements; thus, the services being paid for would need
to be “above and beyond” those requirements. In summary, to be eligible to respond to the solicitation
for the NE-PES program, a landowner must:

have lands classified as ranchlands and be engaged in the production of beef cattle;

be located within the Northern Everglades;

have enrolled the ranchlands containing the proposed WMA(s) in the FDACS BMP program, or
be in the process of enrolling the lands, by the date of the solicitation release; and

be in compliance with SFWMD rules and regulations and federal wetlands regulations with
regard to all of the lands in their ownership.
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Define Environmental Services in Relation to the Buyer: Most landscapes have the potential to
provide multiple environmental services, but buyers who are willing and able to pay for those services
must be identified. Once they are identified, the buyer’s particular interests influence the service’s
definition. In practice, defining the service requires an iterative process to balance what the buyer
wants, what service providers are willing and able provide, and how the service can be documented
credibly and cost-effectively.
The FRESP collaboration was able to identify three services: habitat protection and restoration,
water quality improvement for Lake Okeechobee, and dampening of the fluctuations in Lake
Okeechobee levels. Several federal and state agencies participated in the collaboration or were
identified as possible buyers of these services. The buyer that emerged from the process was the
SFWMD.475 The FWS programs had reliable funding, but the funds were for the purchase of easements
or fee-simple purchase of land to create wildlife reserves. The US Army Corps of Engineers and USDA
had access to significant funding, but their programs were not designed to make payments to
individual ranches for documented services in a market-like program. The SFWMD, the agency of the
state of Florida responsible for improving water quality, maintaining flood control and water supply,
and Everglades’ restoration, was the logical buyer because of its dual missions of water quality and
quantity, combined with ad valorem taxing authority and discretionary budget authority to create a
new program. However, the SFWMD agency mission did not extend to habitat restoration, even though
its regulatory programs did take adverse effects on habitat into consideration when evaluating
permits to make changes to land and water management on private lands.
Hence, only two of the three services became the focus of PES program design. Depending on site
characteristics, some ranchers would be paid for P removed from off-ranch water that was pumped
onto the ranch, retained for a period required to remove and sequester P, and then discharged back
into the public waterways. Other ranchers would be paid based on the amount of stormwater retained
on their lands. Water retention—that is, water kept in rehydrated wetlands, ditches, and the soil
profile to either evaporate or seep through the groundwater system—could be provided on a ranch
with berms, pumps, culverts with riser structures, or combinations of all of these. Projects that retain
water would be designed to ensure that they also removed P from stormwater.
Calculating Services above a Baseline for Contracting: Both the agency-buyer and the ranchersellers rejected the use of contracts where the annual payment would vary with the weather (rainfall
and runoff). Instead, the mutual preference was to establish contracts that would set a fixed annual
service payment, a preference that had a significant effect on the program’s contracts. The FRESP
collaborators agreed that contracts would be based on model predictions of average annual water
retention or nutrient removal service expected during a 10-year rainfall period of record. Although the
payment would be fixed annually—and thus, in any one year a rancher might fall short of or exceed
the service level commitment—over the life of the 10-year contract, the average service level would be
provided.
Because of the tight relationship between the modeled estimate of the service and the payment,
the collaborators agreed that model predictions would have to be based on site-specific conditions
475
There was no expectation that a private buyer would pay for the water services that ranch land could provide because those
services accrued to society at large rather than being appropriable to any individual private entity. On the other hand, many of the
ranches were selling exclusive hunting leases to private entities, which often worked with the rancher to improve habitat for
recreational species. Early in the discussion, the creation of mitigation banks to sell habitat and wetlands offsets was explored. But
because banks have a small footprint and are focused on habitat conditions, they would not address the watershed-scale goals for
water quality improvement and hydrologic modifications in the Everglades watershed.
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(e.g., size, soils, vegetation, topography, and existing and proposed water management infrastructure).
The partners also agreed that every applicant would use the same model for estimating services. The
collaborators then confronted the question of which models to propose for that common calculation.
After deliberation and review of the available models, they concluded that all of the available models
were either too complicated to run or were too data demanding to be used in a market-based
solicitation. As a result, the collaborators hired consultants and engaged agency staff to prepare new
models designed to compute average annual water retention and average annual P removal over a 10year period of rainfall.476
As noted earlier, at the outset of the collaboration, a key concern expressed by the agencies (the
buyer)—and, by extension, the taxpayer—was that services being paid for would be above and beyond
existing requirements. Accordingly, an operational process and tool for calculating baseline
environmental services was developed by the buyer and presented to the collaboration for approval.
Using the tool, only above-baseline services would be credited for payment.477
Documentation for Payment: Programs that pay for performance need to define “service
performance” in such a way that it is measurable. Also, because buyers have an interest in knowing
that they are “getting what they paid for,” and because no tangible commodity is produced (a pound of
oranges or a steer at the market, for example), documentation of service level, and its certainty,
became an important topic for the collaboration—so important that the partners established a
documentation team tasked with finding cost-effective ways to measure the services provided by the
rancher-sellers.
The FRESP collaborators agreed that documentation should be inexpensive and credible to both
the buyer and the seller. All agreed that the benefits of more measurements (from greater accuracy
and higher precision) needed to be evaluated in relation to the increased cost of collecting, analyzing,
and managing additional data. To make this benefit–cost comparison, FRESP invested in extensive
flow monitoring, automated water sampling, groundwater wells, vegetation transects, water chemical
analysis, and soil analysis at the pilot sites. This investment allowed the documentation team to
analyze the costs of collecting and assessing the data streams from this extensive measurement. The
team was able to consider the loss of accuracy and precision if fewer data were available, relative to
the heavily instrumented alternative. In this way, a balance between the costs of documentation and
the benefits of additional service measurements was found.
In the end, the collaboration agreed to the following documentation requirements as the basis for
payment. First, monthly site visits would be conducted by a third-party agent who would verify site
conditions and collect a report from the rancher providing documentation that the operation and
maintenance of the WMA was as specified in the contract. In addition, for the water retention service,
the daily surface water stage would be measured and related to pump and rainfall records to
determine whether the stage inside the WMA varies logically with rainfall and pumped water inputs
(i.e., whether the water was being retained). For nutrient removal WMAs, the pump records would be
able to show whether the pumps were running as required when the canal reached stages that, as
specified in the contract, were supposed to trigger pump operations. Note that the documentation
focused on verification of contract compliance and not on measuring the services provided in any year.
476
The time and resources it took to develop these program models was an unanticipated cost and delay in the development of the
program.
477
Furthermore, as a result of participation in the Northern Everglades Payment for Environmental Services program, the water
retention baseline established will be permanently maintained postcontract.
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Establishing the Payment: From the outset, the partners recognized that setting the payment for
water management services was a critical issue. However, they also recognized that the payment
system would depend upon how the services were defined and how the contracts were structured. As
a result, the payment discussion remained at a conceptual level in the early years of the collaboration
as other matters were resolved. The delay in fact had an advantage as, over time, the buyers and
sellers were able to come to a better appreciation of each other’s perspectives on payment.
The buyers stressed that the payment would have to be competitive with the cost of alternative
ways in which they could secure the service, typically through large-scale regional projects. However,
other nonfinancial considerations affected their willingness to pay, such as the following: WMAs could
be put in place quickly, but the services they generated would not be permanent; WMA service levels
would be less certain than those of public projects; and the administrative costs of monitoring a large
number of dispersed water management contracts would be high. FRESP addressed each of these
concerns in the contract design so that the agency would be more willing to pay for on-ranch services.
However, the buyer was never able to define in advance what its willingness to pay might be.
The sellers emphasized the need to recover out-of-pocket costs and earn some margin above those
costs to compensate them for increased managerial costs and risk to cattle production. What became
evident was that, for the sellers, it was not a simple bottom-line cash calculation that established the
minimum payment they might accept. Different ranchers had different accounting perspectives on
what they considered profit (e.g., competitive return on investment, payback period, and cash flow
certainty). Also, the ranchers were concerned with nonfinancial aspects: how much management time
would be required to honor the water management contract and reporting requirements, reluctance
to engage in a contractual relationship with a regulatory agency like SFWMD, and the risks (perceived
or real) of allowing government agents access to their property.
Because the buyer was not able to define its willingness to pay, and different ranchers would have
different payment thresholds at which they would be willing to provide services, the collaborators
settled on a bid-in (reverse auction) process. Ranchers would submit a two-part payment request in
response to a solicitation. The costs for the first part—payment to cover the costs of design,
permitting, and construction of the WMA—would be reimbursed as justified by the submission of
receipts to support actual costs incurred. The second part of the payment request would be for a lumpsum annual service payment, with no expectation that the service payment request must be justified to
the buyer in the proposal. However, contract compliance documentation, as described above, would
have to be provided annually for sellers to receive the service payment.478 It would be up to the buyer
to determine whether it was willing to agree to the combined payment request for the estimated level
of service.
Accommodating Regulatory Requirements: The decision to use contracts created two regulatory
challenges. First, because the NE-PES program would be a contract between a buyer and landowners,
landowners argued convincingly that they would not enter into a contract unless given assurances
that doing so would not lead to unanticipated regulatory requirements. For example, sellers were
concerned about being required to maintain WMA-created endangered species habitat or wetland
areas at the end of the contract. Second, from the pilot implementation experiments, it was clear that
ranchers would not participate in a program requiring a significant amount of time for permit
478
A two-part payment meant that the rancher-seller would not have to finance the capital costs and then recover the costs
through the annual service payment. This payment system was necessary because many ranchers were concerned that future
annual payments would not be honored. The payment of up-front capital costs eliminated that concern.
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application. State and federal agencies also were concerned about program administration costs and
staff time resulting from a scaled-up version of a PES program.
Designing and putting in place the necessary framework and tools for an integrated and
streamlined permitting approach became a major activity of FRESP project directors during the fiveyear pilot phase. The result of that effort was the creation of three sets of tools designed specifically
for the NE-PES program: (a) a joint NRCS and FWS ESA consultation guidance matrix designed to
protect federally listed species during the construction of a WMA, (b) a regional general permit from
the US Army Corps of Engineers to expedite the initial permitting process and provide some assurance
that the landowner could remove some structures at the end of the contract, and (c) the development
of state and federal agency MOUs and related guidance that identify roles and responsibilities
associated with implementing and permitting the NE-PES program.479
V. Lessons Learned
Encouraging private landowners to take on innovative conservation practices is an emerging goal
of federal and state programs.480 And at a conceptual level, support for market-like programs is broad
and increasing. However, we are aware of relatively few working examples of programs that bring
together private landowners and conservation interests in a market-like program.
The FRESP and NE-PES story illustrates what it means to use market theory in operational PES
program design. The success in creating an operating program can be traced in large part to effective
collaboration processes. Collaboration was necessary for a variety of reasons, but mainly because both
the buyers and the sellers in a market can veto the program simply by not participating. A
collaborative process and design team needs to be put in place and structured in much the same way
as any other interest-based negotiation.481 The following specific lessons can be drawn from the NEPES experience.

The first challenge is to gain trust among the key interests (landowners, environmental groups,
and regulatory agencies) so they will make a commitment to working together to find
acceptable program designs; however, participants’ views are likely to be colored initially by
suspicions (indeed caricatures) of each other.

Trust-building requires a facilitator who has the dedicated time and financial resources to help
the stakeholders understand the possible benefits of joining a PES design collaboration. WWF
staff filled that role in the NE-PES development process.

Most participants will already be busy, and the call to design a PES will become a new work
responsibility. Given the complexity of the task, the collaboration requires dedicated
leadership with skills in facilitation, project management, and fundraising as well as a basic
understanding of the interests and constraints of each of the collaborators. The process that
led to the creation of the NE-PES was supported by $7 million in funding and involved both
WWF and RFF staff, who were viewed as credible and neutral facilitators.
479
Papers providing more detail, and the permit itself, can be found at www.fresp.org.
“White House Conference on Cooperative Conservation,” accessed June 25, 2013, http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/whccc/.
481
See discussion above in section on “Communities and Collective Action.”
480
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
The facilitators had, or were able to rapidly acquire, credible technical knowledge of relevant
federal and state policies, laws, and regulations;482 ranch finance; hydrology; soil science;
computer modeling; statistics; monitoring technology; and other technical issues. The
combination of broad-based technical understanding and facilitation skills were important
both to the process and to the ultimate design of the program, given the need to reconcile the
participants’ often differing interests in the collaboration.

Designing a PES program demands the willingness and the opportunity to “learn while doing.”
For example, rather than design a program first and then try to implement it, FRESP partners
decided to implement on-ranch demonstration projects and build the program around the
experiences gained from contracting, designing, constructing, permitting, operating, and
monitoring those water management projects. Through this iterative process, a more
grounded, practical, and easy-to-administer program evolved because it was based on the realworld experiences of the partners.

Learning while doing has implications for the process of program design. First, participants
will need pilot sites and the funding to support them. Second, participants will need time to
learn and reach agreement with each other through conversations and experimentation.

One must develop credible technical arguments to support the PES design. Credibility can be
enhanced via transparent, iterative interactions around technical analysis and by engaging
credible and trusted scientific experts.
Acceptance among the collaborators is not enough. Reaching out beyond the collaboration and
effectively advocating for a new idea requires an entrepreneurial spirit among those in the
collaboration. In bringing about the NE-PES, the eight initial ranchers were environmental
entrepreneurs willing to look for new approaches to producing socially desirable environmental
services and new profit opportunities that would allow them to continue ranching. Most importantly,
each was willing to serve as a messenger and a trusted voice to the rest of the ranching community.
State agency personnel were policy entrepreneurs willing to stretch the agencies’ missions, regulatory
framework, and budgets to design a PES program. They had to have the ability to understand how a
PES program could be designed and then argue for how it could fit within their agencies’
bureaucracies. The researchers supporting FRESP were scientific entrepreneurs willing to make
conclusive statements in the face of uncertainty and to make the success of the program a priority over
peer-reviewed publications that served their immediate professional needs. The WWF and RFF
facilitators acted as social entrepreneurs, arguing for adherence to market-like fundamentals but
remaining open to ensuring that all stakeholder issues and concerns were addressed in the details of
PES program design. Their neutrality about design elements earned them the trust of the ranchers and
the agencies in the collaboration. In turn, this brought credibility to FRESP among agencies and among
environmental NGOs and agricultural communities outside the collaboration that were often at odds.
The credibility of the partnership created opportunities to secure increased funding. RFF and WWF
also provided a bridge from the technical analysis needed to support the program and the ranchers,
whose expertise was in the business of ranching. Likewise, WWF and RFF created a bridge between
the agencies and the scientific community, allowing them to appreciate the challenges of ranching as a
business.
482
For example, the payment for ecosystem services concept is a new approach to changing conservation behavior. As such, it will
have a greater chance of acceptance if it fits into and complements existing policies and programs. On the other hand, existing
programs may need to be modestly adjusted to accommodate the new payment for ecosystem services program.
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Part Four: Communicating Climate Change
I. Climate Change: The Communications Challenge
Climate change is an existential challenge to our contemporary worldviews …. Not only do we have
to change our view of the ecosystem, but we also have to change our view of our place within it. Have
we as a species grown to such numbers, and has our technology grown to such power, that we can
alter and manage the ecosystem on a planetary scale? ... [S]ome see the question and subsequent
answer as intellectual and spiritual hubris, but others see it as self-evident.
One field in particular needs to become more engaged: the academic scientists and particularly the
social scientists. Too much of the debate is dominated by the physical sciences in defining the problem
and by economics in defining the solutions. Both fields focus heavily on the rational and quantitative
treatments of the issue and fail to capture the behavioral and cultural aspects that explain why people
accept or reject scientific evidence, analysis, and conclusions.483
Within the environmental and scientific communities, climate change may be the central
communications challenge of the first decades of the twenty-first century. In 2012, despite Superstorm
Sandy, devastating drought, and record high temperatures, news coverage of climate change hit its
lowest level since the climate negotiations collapsed in Copenhagen in 2009.484 During a rash of
extreme heat waves in July, fewer than 9 percent of television stories and 26 percent of print stories
reported on the heat waves in the context of climate change. ABC and CNN mentioned the connection
in just 2 and 4 percent of heat wave coverage, respectively, and Fox mentioned it only to deny the
connection.485 Notably, discussion of extreme weather was at an all-time high, and evidence suggests
that experiences of extreme weather increase people’s belief that climate change is occurring,486
although the duration of this effect is unclear.
With only modest mainstream media coverage of climate change, and even more limited coverage
emphasizing scientific consensus about climate change, numerous “niche” media sources and websites
have emerged. However, these seem primarily geared to reach that small percentage of Americans
who are already advocates for climate action. There is Joe Romm’s “Climate Progress” blog; Al Gore’s
“Climate Reality Project” and the newly funded RealityDrop.org, designed to help people “spread
truth” and “destroy denial” through social media; the coalition of scientists and journalists working to
make the science more accessible at “Climate Central;” the organizing and advocacy group at “350.org”
(referring to scientific findings of the need to keep atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide
below 350 parts per million to keep the global average temperature rise to 1C); “Forecast the Facts,”
which focuses on accountability for broadcast meteorologists and fighting climate science denial; and
“ecoAmerica,” which does extensive consumer research and cultivates partnerships to support
programs aimed at mainstream Americans. These groups provide useful communications but are
unlikely to attract the broader audiences that need to be reached if climate policy is to gain
momentum. A 2010 study found that 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists agree that
483
Andrew Hoffman, “Climate Science as Culture War,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2012,
http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/climate_science_as_culture_war.
484
Douglas Fischer, “Climate Coverage, Dominated by Weird Weather, Falls Further in 2012,” The Daily Climate, January 2, 2013,
http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/01/2012-climate-change-reporting.
485
Jill Fitzsimmons and Max Greenberg, “STUDY: TV Media Ignore Climate Change in Coverage of Record July Heat,” Media
Matters, August 15, 2012, http://mediamatters.org/research/2012/08/15/tv-media-ignore-climate-change-in-coverage-ofr/189366.
486
T. Myers, E. Maibach, C. Roser-Renouf, K. Akerlof, and A. Leiserowitz, “The Relationship between Personal Experience and Belief
in the Reality of Global Warming,” Nature Climate Change 3, no. 3 (2012): 343-347.
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humans are causing climate change,487 whereas a survey the same year found that 66 percent of
Americans are not aware of the broad scientific agreement on anthropogenic (human-caused) climate
change—in fact, the belief that “most scientists think global warming is happening” actually declined
between 2008 and 2011.488
A. Psychological Barriers to Action
Robert Gifford, professor of psychology at the University of Victoria and president of the
Environmental Division of the International Association of Applied Psychology, asserts that seven
psychological barriers stymie belief and action on climate change (many of which relate to our earlier
discussion of insights from social psychology). These barriers include (a) limited cognition about the
problem, (b) incongruous worldviews, (c) social comparisons and norms, (d) sunk costs and
behavioral momentum, (e) negative perceptions of experts and authorities, (f) risk perceptions, and
(g) positive but inadequate behavior change.489 The implications of these barriers for climate change
communication, information processing, and decisionmaking have not been considered as a group.
Cognition: Gifford points out that the human brain has not evolved far beyond “the ancient brain”
concerned with the “immediate band, immediate dangers, exploitable resources, and the present
time,” none of which are “naturally consistent with being concerned … about global climate change.”490
Limited knowledge can also serve as a barrier, not just in terms of absent or inaccurate information,
but also in terms of not knowing what to do about climate change and not knowing the relative
magnitude of beneficial impacts of various actions. There is also the environmental numbness effect—
tuning out and/or oversaturation and desensitization (“I’m sick of climate change”). The issue of
uncertainty is particularly powerful: “Individuals tend to interpret any sign of uncertainty, for
example, in the size of a resource pool or the rate at which the resource regenerates, as sufficient
reason to harvest at a rate that favors self-interest rather than the environment.”491 Discounting is
influential, not just in terms of undervaluing future risks, but also in the spatial discounting of current
risks. People tend to see climate change as primarily impacting poor people in developing countries,
but evidence also suggests that many people discount risks only as distant as the next county or state.
Lastly, Gifford points to the optimism bias and, on the other hand, a perceived lack of self-efficacy and
fatalism.
Worldviews: Diverse worldviews include the belief that mankind could not possibly be at the root
of planetary change and that divine agency is at work or, alternatively, that environmental
stewardship is a religious imperative. Others may believe that mechanical innovation and engineering
(dubbed by some as “techno-salvation”) can solve environmental problems. In addition, some will
benefit, either literally or psychologically, from maintaining the status quo, leading to a system of
justification and resistance to change, although Feygina and colleagues (2010) show that if mitigation
can be “successfully portrayed as part of the system, this lack of action on the part of system justifiers
can change.”492
487
W. Anderegg, J. Prall, J. Harold, and S. Schneider, “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the USA 107, no. 27 (2010): 12107–12109.
488
Ding et al., “Support for Climate Policy.”
489
Robert Gifford, “The Dragons of Inaction: Psychological Barriers That Limit Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation,”
American Psychologist 66, no. 4 (2011): 290–302.
490
Ibid., 291.
491
Ibid., 292.
492
Gifford, “Dragons of Inaction,” 293 (quoting Feygina et al. 2010).
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Sunk Costs and Behavioral Momentum: Most people have significant physical investments—in cars,
appliances, and technology—that dissuade them from wanting to make new and additional
investments, “at least until disadvantages become too painful.”493 This goes hand-in-hand with
behavioral momentum. “Ensconced habits do not change without a substantial push; priming and even
attitude change often do not lead to behavioral change.”494 As B. F. Skinner remarked, “It is often easier
to escape in other ways—by ignoring or forgetting the advice or by finding a way to escape that does
not require solving the problem.”495 Many people also have less and less “place attachment” and
investment in their communities and environment as lives are increasingly characterized by
geographic mobility—not just having six or seven jobs during their careers, but living in six or seven
different places.
Mistrust: Significant evidence suggests that people distrust scientists and government officials.
“Some strongly react against advice or policy that seems to threaten their freedom partly because it is
based on a lack of trust in those who give the advice or set the policy.”496 Mistrust is a two-way street.
With increasing political polarization, which has come to include vitriolic attacks on science, some
liberal academics and others have come to distrust certain segments of society, such as the Tea Party
movement. Gifford asserts that more research about “the emotional elements underlying the denial of
climate change and its human connections [is] needed.”497
Risk: One must consider not only how people perceive environmental risks, but also how they
perceive risks associated with changing behaviors. Some risks are functional: If one purchases an
electric car, what if the battery charge doesn’t last as long as advertised, and he or she does not have
access to a charging station? Some risks are physical: A hybrid car may not be as crash safe as a sport
utility vehicle. Some risks are financial: How quickly will one recoup an investment in weatherizing a
home? Some risks are social and psychological: A public change in behavior can lead to both positive
and negative judgments by friends and colleagues. Finally, some risks are temporal: Will the time
spent researching and planning be worth it relative to other activities on which one could spend one’s
limited free time?498
Inadequate Change: One of the prominent concerns with regard to social marketing and other
attempts to induce proenvironmental behavior is whether these efforts should strive to influence
individuals or broader social networks, and whether they should motivate piecemeal changes or more
significant private and public actions, including advocacy and demands for political action.
Proenvironmental intent may not correspond to proenvironmental impact, and the adoption of small,
relatively ineffective environmental behaviors may lead one to justify other negative behaviors.499
B. Logic Schism and Moving toward the Middle
As Andrew Hoffman asserts, “Climate change is a proxy for deeper conflicts over alternative
visions of the future and competing centers of authority in society .… The great danger of a protracted
partisan divide is that the debate will take the form of … a logic schism, a breakdown in debate in
which opposing sides are talking about completely different cultural issues.”500 Those interested in
493
Ibid., 294.
Ibid.
495
Ibid.
496
Ibid.
497
Ibid., 296.
498
Ibid.
499
Corner and Randall, “Selling Climate Change.”
500
Hoffman, “Climate Science as Culture War.”
494
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advancing actions to address climate change need to develop messaging and communications that
affirm rather than challenge worldviews and values and “neutralize the tendency of people to polarize
along cultural lines when they consider information.”501 A 2011 study, “Global Warming’s Six
Americas,” identifies six distinct public viewpoints on climate change science. The “alarmed” and the
“dismissive” are the vocal minorities whose positions are fairly entrenched. The majority are in the
middle—the “concerned,” “cautious,” “disengaged,” and “doubtful.” They are more open to discussion
and debate and “through direct engagement can be separated from the ideological extremes of their
cultural community.”502 Hoffman outlines eight techniques for constructive discussion:503

know your audience

ask the right scientific questions

move beyond data and models

focus on broker frames

recognize the power of language and terminology

employ climate brokers

recognize multiple referent groups

employ events as leverage for change
One interesting aspect of climate change communication is that most messaging on this topic is
“analytical,” despite overwhelming evidence from social psychology that the experiential processing
system is a much stronger motivator for action.504 “Personal or anecdotal accounts of negative climate
change experience, which could easily outweigh statistical evidence, are rarely put into play, despite
evidence that even a stranger’s past experiences can evoke strong feelings in people, making such
communications memorable and therefore dominant in processing.”505 The section below on “Climate
Brokers and The Right Science” highlights an example of capitalizing on experiential processing in a
Colorado community.
C. Framing and Narrative
As noted earlier, framing can be critical for engagement, and specific frames need to be geared
toward specific audiences. In the 1970s, cognitive psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky
found that when individuals are presented with an ambiguous or uncertain context, “the different
ways in which a message is presented or framed—apart from the content itself—can result in very
different responses, depending on the terminology used to describe the problem or the visual context
provided in the message.”506 Climate change presents just such a circumstance. Matthew Nisbet,
associate professor of communication at American University and codirector of the Center for Social
Media, has created a typology of frames applicable to climate change (see Table 2).507 Frames could
include an emphasis on American know-how and capacity to innovate (focusing on activities already
501
Kahan et al., “Second National Risk and Culture Study,” 16.
Hoffman, “Climate Science as Culture War,” (referencing Leiserowitz, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, and Smith 2011).
503
Ibid.
504
Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, The Psychology of Climate Change Communication: A Guide for Scientists,
Journalists, Educators, Political Aides, and the Interested Public (New York: Columbia University, 2009).
505
Ibid., 16.
506
Nisbet, “Communicating Climate Change,” (referencing Kahneman 2002).
507
Ibid.
502
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underway in businesses, cities, and states); they could argue for scientific and economic
competitiveness; or they could stress national security and energy independence. For example,
General Anthony Zinni, retired marine and former head of US Central Command, stated, “We will pay
for [climate change] one way or another. We will pay to reduce GHG emissions today and we’ll have to
take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will
involve human lives.”508 One frame that may deserve increased attention is replacing the uncertainty
or probability of climate change with the risk of climate change. Many people are cognizant of lowprobability, high-consequence events and the need to address them (e.g., by purchasing fire
insurance). For some, climate change may be perceived similarly, such that “the prudent course of
action is to obtain insurance in the form of both behavioral and technological change.”509 Some labels
and hot-button words should be avoided by those interested in climate change communications.
“Global warming” and “taxes” are common examples, but “denier,” “uncertainty,” and “consensus” also
activate negative associations for many members of the public.510
Table 2. Typology of Frames Applicable to Climate Change
Source: Nisbet, “Communicating Climate Change.”
In addition to tailoring frames and messages to specific media and audiences, climate change
communications need to use “carefully researched metaphors, allusions, and examples that trigger a
508
Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Psychology of Climate Change Communication, 12.
Hoffman, “Climate Science as Culture War.”
510
Ibid.
509
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new way of thinking about the personal relevance of climate change.”511 Richard Somerville,
climatologist and expert in communicating climate change, recommends medical metaphors for
climate issues. Below we provide some highlights from his narrative:

At your annual checkup, if you’re sensible, when the doctor tells you to lose weight and
exercise more, you don’t argue. You don’t insult your doctor by complaining that medical
science is imperfect and can’t yet prevent cancer or cure AIDS. You don’t label your doctor a
radical alarmist…Of course, some people just will not do what experts tell them. Noncompliance by some patients is a big problem for physicians.

Everybody knows that a body temperature only a few degrees above normal is a symptom that
can indicate medical problems that may have serious consequences, sometimes including
death. Yet we still haven’t educated most people to understand that a planetary fever of a few
degrees can mean melting ice caps, rising sea level, massive disruptions in water supply, killer
heat waves, and stronger hurricanes.

Quitting smoking, like quitting using fossil fuels, is not easy to do, and in both cases the
difficulty in quitting is immediate, while the most important benefits are all long-term.

Medical decisions frequently involve substantial risk. People tend to be realistic about the
consequences of serious medical problems. They know that a coronary artery bypass
operation is major surgery. They accept the cost and the risk, understanding clearly that doing
nothing also entails real costs and dangerous risks. They don’t expect that a simple bandage
will cure a potentially fatal disease. As a climate scientist, I sometimes fear that we are wasting
time arguing about which type of bandage is most attractive as a climate remedy, instead of
facing the hard decisions, and the risks, that climate change demands of us.

As is often the case with medical decisions, our planetary wellbeing is ultimately in the hands
of the patient.512
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used a medical metaphor when discussing climate change,
saying, “If 98 doctors say my son is ill and needs medication and two say, ‘No, he doesn’t, he is fine,’ I
will go with the 98. It’s common sense—the same with climate change. We go with the majority, the
large majority ….”513 A more recent example is the analogy of climate change and steroid use. The
National Center for Atmospheric Research developed a cartoon conflating carbon dioxide and other
GHGs in the atmosphere with a baseball player on steroids. Steroids increase the chances of hitting a
“home run” (i.e., extreme weather) but don’t guarantee that each “home run” was caused by steroid
use (i.e., GHG concentrations in the atmosphere).514
II. Climate Brokers and the “Right Science”
“A lot of scientists do a very poor job of communicating, and, like everybody else, they
exaggerate how good they are at communicating. They hold their audience responsible for
their own failures to communicate.”515
511
Nisbet, “Communicating Climate Change.”
Richard Somerville, “Medical Metaphors for Climate Issues,” Climatic Change 76, no. 1 (2006): 1–6.
513
Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Psychology of Climate Change Communication, 26–28.
514
Noah Besser, Steroids, Baseball, and Climate Change. What Do Home Runs and Weather Extremes Have in Common? (video
produced by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Communications for AtmosNews: NCAR & UCAR Science), accessed
June 25, 2013, https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/attribution/steroids-baseball-climate-change.
515
Etienne Benson, Society’s Grand Challenges: Insights from Psychological Science—Global Climate Change (Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association, 2008).
512
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Krosnick and colleagues studied specific cognitions or beliefs that predict people’s perceptions of
climate change as a national issue that warrants government intervention. They demonstrated five key
beliefs that motivate people to take action on climate change and to support aggressive public policies.
These include beliefs that (a) climate change is real, (b) “I am certain it is real,” (c) it is primarily
caused by humans, (d) it is harmful to people, and (e) the problem can be solved.516 Related to this,
Somerville argues that scientists should focus their messaging on six key principles: (a) the essential
findings of mainstream climate change science are firm, (b) the GHG effect is well understood and is as
real as gravity, (c) our climate predictions are coming true, (d) the standard skeptical arguments have
been refuted many times over, (e) science has its own high standards, and (f) the leading scientific
organizations of the world have carefully examined the results of climate science and have endorsed
these results.517
Many Americans remain skeptical about whether humans are causing current climate change and
ask, “Why us? Why now?” What more can the scientific community do to effectively communicate
scientific information regarding climate change? Communications experts point to a role for “public
intellectuals,” personable and thoughtful academics and scientists who step out of their offices and
conferences and talk to the media and local communities. This sort of outreach is rarely incentivized in
current academic culture and, thus, the public intellectual has become “an arcane and elusive option in
today’s social sciences.”518 When it comes to cultivating discussions, scientists arguably have the most
to offer if they can serve as “honest brokers … integrating scientific knowledge with stakeholder
concerns to explore alternative possible courses of action.”519 Some climate communications analysts
emphasize the need for a two-way public dialogue in which scientists and journalists “find out what
[people] care about in their lives and provide information on how climate change impacts those things,
moving us closer to the NRC recommendation ‘getting the science right, and getting the right
science.’”520
This is what Julia Kumari set out to do with her iSeeChange public media experiment, part of the
Localore project funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Kumari, who has cultivated
relationships with local farmers in western Colorado, brings their questions to relevant scientists,
facilitating a two-way direct dialogue. The recently launched website, www.thealmanac.org, collects
public observations and questions and brings formerly private observations and exchanges to the
public eye, creating an online, crowd-sourced climate change journal.
However, getting a critical mass of scientists to engage in this way is a behavior change project
unto itself. John Besley and Matthew Nisbet found that scientists’ perceptions of the media, public
science knowledge, and public affairs still remain largely out of step with research findings and work
across a variety of social science fields over the past 30 years. “Few scientists view their role as an
enabler of direct public participation in decision-making through formats such as deliberative
meetings and [most] do not believe there are personal benefits for investing in these activities.”521 This
situation has led Nisbet and others to conclude that, in addition to improving understanding of how
516
J. Krosnick, A. Holbrook, L. Lowe, and P. Visser, “The Origins and Consequences of Democratic Citizens,” Climatic Change 77
(2006): 7–43.
517
Richard Somerville, “How Much Should the Public Know about Climate Science?” Climatic Change 104, no. 3–4 (2011): 509–514.
518
Hoffman, “Climate Science as Culture War.”
519
Ibid.
520
R. Shwom, A. Dan, and T. Dietz, “The Effects of Information and State of Residence on Climate Change Policy Preferences,”
Climatic Change 90 (2008): 354.
521
John Besley and Matthew Nisbet, “How Scientists View the Public, the Media and the Political Process,” Public Understanding of
Science, published online 30 August 2011: 1.
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the presentation of scientific information influences public beliefs, behaviors, and decisionmaking, it is
also “increasingly important to understand how scientists form judgments about the public sphere.”522
In addition to getting more scientists involved in public dialogues, it is also important to employ other
climate brokers—such as business leaders, who can help make the connection between climate
change and economic interests, or military leaders, who can help people see climate action as a way to
improve national safety and security.
III. Communicating Impacts with Local Experiences
Can and should climate communications be more focused on local experiences and impacts, given
that the general public may care more about local and immediate threats? On one hand, evidence
suggests that natural disasters—even distant ones, like the tsunamis in South and Southeast Asia—can
influence perceptions of climate change risk.523 And clearly, “extreme events that may occur in a given
year provide recurring teachable moments that communicators can use to relate climate change to the
experience of a local audience.”524 On the other hand, there seems to be a clear connection between
direct experience/observation of local/regional environmental problems, like toxic waste disposal,
water pollution, or brownfields, and the willingness to invest financial and political resources in
protecting the environment.
However, the unique nature of climate change may mean that direct correlation with
local/regional impacts is less important when it comes to public support for climate change policies.
Rachael Schwom and colleagues compared support for eight climate-related policies across a sample
of Virginia and Michigan residents who were given information about either regional or national
climate change impacts. First, the authors found no significant relationship between the scale of the
information provided and willingness to support the policies.525 Second, the study found that
Michiganders were less likely to support six of the eight policies than were respondents from Virginia,
but that this could not be attributed to factors like the auto industry’s presence in Michigan or the
larger number of urban dwellers in Virginia. The authors recommended that before the scientific
community concludes that public support is greater for localized issues, “more empirical research is
needed to better understand the role of framing issues at different geographic scales,” and argued for a
more deliberative dialogue between climate scientists and the public.526
IV. Networks and Innovative Marketing
“Individualistic framing of climate change is problematic for people for two reasons. Firstly, it
does not provide a representation of society as it is experienced (as an interconnected network
of social relations). Secondly, there is a constant tension with the depiction of climate change
as a shared, collective problem and the individualized focus on behavior. Polls of the electorate
have repeatedly revealed a desire for strong political leadership on climate change, suggesting
that the strategy for individualizing climate change risk and responsibility may contribute to a
governance trap.”527
522
Ibid., 2.
Benson, Society’s Grand Challenges.
524
Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Psychology of Climate Change Communication, 10.
525
Shwom et al., “The Effects of Information.”
526
Ibid., 253.
527
Corner and Randall, “Selling Climate Change,” 1010. Note that, although the referenced poll was conducted in the United
Kingdom, Krosnick and colleagues have found similar support among the US electorate. Katherine O’Konski, “Dr. Jon Krosnick:
Public Opinion on Climate Change and Its Impact on Voting,” Climate Science Watch, October 18, 2011,
http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2011/10/18/dr-jon-krosnick-public-opinion-on-climate-change-and-its-impact-on-voting/.
523
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Stern and colleagues developed the value–belief–norm model of environmentally significant
behavior, which posits that the combination of altruistic values and an ecological worldview generates
a sense of moral obligation to act, whereas being egoistic is negatively correlated with proenvironmental behavior. Furthermore, the model shows that even individuals who have the identified
values will not act in a pro-environmental way if they do not believe that they are able to reduce
negative consequences.528 The question then is how to cultivate or activate “altruistic,” “biospheric,”
“egalitarian,” and “self-transcending” values; override “egoistic,” “individualistic,” and “self-enhancing”
worldviews; and advance a clear sense of agency.
One successful nonprofit program that raises funds for people with leukemia and other blood
cancers is Team In Training, which creates a group identity and support system, encourages
accountability through physical and financial goals, and uses emotional narratives of survivors and
sufferers to maintain motivation. Similarly, participants in the charity Global Action Plan’s EcoTeams
program have consistently cited mutual learning and support as a key reason for achieving and
maintaining changes in behavior.529 Emotional appeals from people around the world impacted by
extreme weather could also help ensure follow-through on EcoTeams, and similar social network,
commitments. These types of examples lend credence to Robert Brulle’s criticism of the narrow scope
of many environmental campaigns and the argument that “the public sphere and civil society
institutions are the crucial mechanisms for affecting change … what is needed is a communication
process that promotes civic engagement and public dialogue, rather than passive receptiveness to
small-scale behavior change.”530
National, state, and local governments can play an important role in encouraging and supporting
preexisting social networks that can take ownership of climate change. Vandenbergh and his
colleagues also argue for more horizontal marketing through social networks but emphasize that “to
harness local social networks, yet achieve results at a national scale, federal programs will need to
include innovative marketing efforts that engage other organizations to reach the numerous target
audiences, not just simple advertising.”531 Ultimately, intensity and certainty of beliefs are primary
drivers in public participation in decisionmaking, joining advocacy groups, attending or speaking up at
public meetings, or even discussing an issue with friends or coworkers. Misinformation and
misperception undermine public engagement.532 Thus, the strategies for climate change
communications and investments in such communication “can no longer be a guessing game. Careful
research needs to be funded and translated into collective action.”533
V. Communicating Climate Change: Summary of Key Findings

Thus far, physical scientists and economists have largely driven the climate debate. Social
scientists need to be better engaged to help explain why people accept or reject scientific
evidence, analysis, and conclusions.

In 2012, climate change news coverage hit its lowest level since the 2009 climate negotiations
in Copenhagen. Meanwhile, media coverage of extreme weather was at an all-time high, and
528
Stern, “Human–Environment Interactions.”
Corner and Randall, “Selling Climate Change.”
530
Ibid, 1012 (referencing Brulle 2010).
531
Vandenbergh et al., “Implementing the Behavioral Wedge,” 10551.
532
Ding et al., “Support for Climate Policy.”
533
Nisbet, “Communicating Climate Change.”
529
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evidence suggests that experiences of extreme weather can increase one’s belief that climate
change is occurring.
534

A 2010 study found that 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists agree that climate
change is occurring and is human-caused, whereas another study the same year found that 66
percent of Americans are not aware of the broad scientific agreement on climate change; the
belief that “most scientists think global warming is happening” declined between 2008 and
2011.

It may be useful to consider seven psychological barriers to climate change belief and action:
(a) limited cognition about the problem, (b) incongruous worldviews, (c) social comparisons
and norms, (d) sunk costs and behavioral momentum, (e) negative perceptions of experts and
authorities, (f) risk perceptions, and (g) positive but inadequate behavior change.

More research about how emotions influence acceptance or denial of climate change and its
human connections is needed.

Insofar as possible, audience research is needed to ensure that climate change
communications and messaging affirm rather than challenge worldviews and values.

Eight techniques can facilitate a constructive climate change discussion: know your audience,
ask the right scientific questions, move beyond data and models, focus on broker frames,
recognize the power of language and terminology, employ climate brokers, recognize multiple
referent groups, and employ extreme events as leverage for change.

The majority of climate change messaging is “analytical,” despite overwhelming evidence from
social psychology that the experiential processing system is a much stronger motivator for
action.

One may want to shift from frames focused on the probability of climate change and bounded
uncertainty to frames emphasizing risk. Many people are cognizant of low-probability, highconsequence events and the need to address them (e.g., by purchasing fire insurance). If
climate change is perceived similarly, it could motivate behavioral and technological change.

One should avoid certain hot-button words and terms in climate change communications:
“global warming” and “taxes” are common examples, but “denier,” “uncertainty,” and
“consensus” also activate negative associations for many members of the public.

Climate change communications need to use “carefully researched metaphors, allusions, and
examples that trigger a new way of thinking about the personal relevance of climate
change.”534 For example, medical metaphors.

Krosnick and colleagues identified five key beliefs that motivate people to take action on
climate change and support aggressive public policies. These include beliefs that: (a) climate
change is real, (b) “I am certain it is real,” 3) it is primarily caused by humans, (d) it is harmful
to people, and (e) the problem can be solved.

“Public intellectuals”—personable and thoughtful academics and scientists who step out of
their offices and conferences and talk to the media and local communities—need to play a
heightened role in communicating scientific information. However, this type of outreach is
rarely incentivized in academic culture.
Nisbet, “Communicating Climate Change.”
SCARLETT, BOYD, AND BRITTAIN
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
Climate communications analysts emphasize the need for a two-way public dialogue in which
scientists and journalists find out what people care about in their lives and provide
information on how climate change impacts those things—“getting the science right and
getting the right science.”

Besley and Nisbet found that scientists’ perceptions of the media, public science knowledge,
and public affairs still remain largely out of step with research findings and work across a
variety of social science fields over the past 30 years.

More empirical research is needed to better understand the role of framing issues at different
geographic scales (i.e., local or regional vs. national).

Individualistic framing of climate change may be problematic. Some behavioral and social
scientists argue that communications should promote civic engagement and public dialogue
rather than individual behavior change.

Climate interest groups need to encourage and support preexisting social networks that can
take ownership of climate change, invest in horizontal marketing through social networks, and
pursue innovative marketing efforts that engage other organizations to reach numerous target
audiences.
Part Five: Conclusions and Summary of Findings
The social sciences have a lot to say about how conservation programs work, how conservation
science (natural science) is interpreted and acted on by individuals and institutions, and how
environmental advocates can motivate green behaviors. In fact, one reaction to this report might be
that the social sciences have too much to say! Surveyed broadly, social theories present policymakers
and advocates with a bewildering array of hypotheses to be tested. Consider, perhaps, the most
important hypothesis of them all: Should we assume that people are rational and unbiased and use
that assumption to design effective policies and advocacy strategies? The first part of this question is
fairly easy to answer: people are not fully rational and unbiased—to the point that it is difficult to
define what “rational” and “unbiased” even mean.
The second part of the question is trickier to resolve. Classical economics defines rational and
unbiased to mean behavior that is informed, self-interested, and resistant to cognitive biases that work
against self-interest. Moreover, classical economics tends to view that description as the best
assumption to make when predicting how people will behave in response to a policy, new scientific
insight, or marketing campaign. It is easy to poke fun at the obvious absurdity of the “rational and
unbiased” assumption. Much of the work reviewed in this report undermines it. However, it is much
more difficult to replace the assumption with a tractable alternative. If people are irrational and
biased, can we predict how they will behave in response to a policy or advocacy intervention?
Classical economic behavioral assumptions are not a bad place to start, but they are not the full
story, as this report notes. Can people’s behavior be influenced by paying them to do things? Of course,
but the impact of financial incentives on behavior is strongly influenced by a richer set of factors,
including moral considerations and community values.
The theories and research summarized in this report—particularly those relating to individual
cognition and behavior—expose the limitations of classical economic theories of human motivation
and behavior. They also identify strategies to nudge behavior in directions favored by advocates (e.g.,
through strategic framing or the use of positive reinforcement). This report contains a wealth of
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insights pertinent to the marketing of conservation initiatives, for example. However, these same
insights and implied strategies are as likely to be used by conservation’s opponents as by its
advocates. Nudges cut both ways.
Behaviorally sophisticated interventions can generate political blowback. Mayor Bloomberg’s soft
drink size limitation policy was based on a behaviorally sophisticated nudge theory. The negative
political reaction is instructive. First, many people do not like being nudged by governments,
corporate advertising, or anything else, even if they share the behavioral goal, because it can feel like
manipulation or a loss of freedom. Second, the reaction to such interventions will be particularly
negative in the absence of a social consensus around the policy goal. Not everyone agrees that soft
drink calories are a problem, or that it is government’s place to address such a potential problem.
With this analogy in mind, we are, for example, not very optimistic about the deployment of
behavioral nudges to meaningfully affect climate-related behaviors, at least at a national scale. The
lack of social consensus around the importance of the problem and its solutions means that nudge-like
interventions, even if pursued by NGOs and not governments, may harden opposition, distrust, and
paranoia, rather than lead to environmentally desirable behavior. On the other hand, more strategic
and widespread communications and marketing could have a meaningful effect on perceptions of
scientific consensus, particularly as messaging spreads within and between trusted social networks.
This could build receptivity to other climate-related messages and increase public interest in
implementing and advocating for solutions.
Nudges are likely to be important and effective when applied in contexts where consensus exists
around a social or community goal. For example, the success of household energy-saving nudges is
probably due in part to the fact that household energy conservation is a relatively uncontroversial
household and social goal. Accordingly, conservation organizations may consider trying to distinguish
between goals that are broadly shared versus those that are contentious. Behavioral nudges are more
likely to be effective in the former set of contexts than the latter.
For example, we would contrast a community that wants more open space, but just can’t figure out
how to finance it, with a community divided over a “jobs versus environment” debate. Nudges
associated with property or sales taxes (e.g., the use of opt-in versus opt-out tax contributions) might
work quite well in the first case.
A recurring theme in our synthesis is the cognitive and behavioral implications of complexity.
Conservation and environmental issues are distinctive in that they often involve large-scale,
interconnected social and biophysical phenomena and trigger correspondingly diverse social reactions
and conflicts. Conservation science plays a schizophrenic role in this complexity. In helping us
understand and communicate the workings of the natural world, science provides important tools to
help people grapple with the unknown. However, as conservation science deepens, it also reinforces
the complexities and uncertainties associated with both environmental problems and their possible
solutions. It may be tempting for conservation advocates to think that if only the public understood
“the science,” they would be converted to the cause.
However, even if “the science” is conclusive and uncontroversial, the social implications rarely are.
More typically, the science is not conclusive and its communication to “publics” reveals uncertainties
and opens the door to doubt. This means that more and better science—by itself, conducted and
communicated in isolation from the social interests it is meant to inform—may have limited influence
as a contributor to conservation advocacy.
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Much more promising is the integration of science with collaborative processes that bring
stakeholders and knowledge providers together to iteratively frame the issues and develop data, tools,
policies, and solutions. For one thing, collaborative processes build trust by fostering intimate social
relationships that resist caricature. For another, they trigger science that is more directly applicable to
the ecological and social problems at play in a given decision context. Collaborative processes do not
just help people trust and understand the science; they also change the science in ways that make it
more pertinent and powerful.
The virtues of collaborative processes go beyond this. The lessons of the FRESP case study are
many, but our main takeaway is that creative new approaches to conservation—because they are
new—depend to a great extent on collective process, co-learning, iterative conflict resolution, and the
development of trust. The FRESP story can be read narrowly as a successful “conservation payments”
story, which it is.
But this disguises the real point of the policy innovation. First, payments alone do not “a working
institution” make. An important take-away from the FRESP example is that “devilish details” matter—
the structure, timing, and form of payments; types of measures ranchers were expected to implement;
modes of monitoring; and other factors all required detailed information and extensive negotiations
and a collective process that generated the program’s other necessary components (e.g., a way to
measure performance and the financing mechanism). Second, the benefits of collaboration and the
attention to process are pertinent to any kind of policy innovation and conservation solution. There is
nothing unique about payment programs in this regard.
The science of collaborative behavior is arguably less robust than the science of individual
behavior, at least in terms of empirical analysis. This is because collaborative behavior is highly
dependent on things like institutional context, size, and the mixture of interests involved. We have,
however, identified contemporary developments in this area. Moreover, our observations of
conservation policy and practice suggest to us that collaborative behaviors will be particularly
important to conservation in the coming decades.
In most of the developed world, top-down environmental policies have run their course. They are,
of course, still important motivators of individual, business, and government environmental behavior.
But the political low-hanging fruit—government interventions with a strong social consensus—has
largely been harvested. Further progress is therefore likely to emerge from voluntary engagements,
public–private partnerships, and creative deal making, all of which require collaborative conflict
resolution rather than a reliance on top-down policy mandates.
Also, the ecological sciences are revealing interdependencies that affect stakeholders across wide
geographic, administrative, and political scales. Wetland conservation in the Upper Mississippi affects
shrimp farmers in the Gulf of Mexico (and wetland losses in the Mississippi affect duck hunters in the
Upper Midwest). What is true within the United States and its patchwork of jurisdictions will also be
true of ecological phenomena at cross-national and global scales. Conventional environmental policies,
regulations, and statutes have difficulty embracing and resolving these diverse interests. Collaborative
institutions and processes are increasingly filling that gap.
Our report contributes to the organizational distinction among individual, collaborative, and social
behavior. We think that this approach provides a useful device for drawing distinctions among the
very diverse social science disciplines, theories, and applications reviewed. And, as just argued, we
think that collaborative behaviors are of particular ongoing relevance to conservation advocates.
However, too much can be made of the distinctions. Social messaging clearly relies on individual-scale
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psychological factors, not just social norms. Collaborations are collections of individuals, and so on.
Our analysis of business behavior is perhaps the place where the distinctions most clearly dissolve.
Businesses are themselves collaborations of individuals, leading to analysis of both the role of the
individual in a business (as employee, manager, or shareholder) and the ways in which individuals
cooperate as members of the same business. Also, businesses routinely find it in their interest to
collaborate with the communities in which they operate, and with government and NGO stakeholders,
to gain competitive advantage. They are also clearly both influenced by social norms (e.g., current
feelings regarding tobacco or genetically modified organisms) and manipulators of those norms via
large and sophisticated marketing resources. Of course, they are ultimately beholden to consumers, in
all their irrational, biased glory.
Conservation organizations hoping to achieve conservation gains via involvement with business
supply chains need to take this diversity of behaviors into account. For example, supply chain
interventions designed to leverage the influence of valuable global brands on their suppliers’ behavior
require attention, not only to business behavior and business-oriented interventions, but also to
consumers’ ability and willingness to absorb, care about, and evaluate environmental information
related to the products they consume.
Despite the wide expanse of research surveyed in this study, empirical examination of natural
resource conservation behaviors per se remains thin. Despite some notable exceptions (Elinor Ostrom
being the most notable), it is only recently that the natural and social sciences have converged enough
to make this kind of analysis practical. To date, conservation practice has been dominated by natural
scientists. Conservation behavior has long been an interest of social scientists, but often one pursued
from the desktop rather than the field. Philosophical, not just practical, barriers have also inhibited
joint understanding.
But that is all quickly changing. Conservation NGOs increasingly embrace social goals as measures
of their conservation effectiveness. Solutions-oriented natural scientists see human behavior as the
key to making their science matter. And social scientists have become, not only more ecologically
sophisticated, but also better at communicating the social importance of natural systems.
These trends suggest that ecological–behavioral conservation studies and interventions are poised
to take an important step forward. Given that the complexities of human behavior clearly matter to
conservation outcomes, we hope that this report will promote discussion of next steps.
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